


Our Little Corner of the World

by Ultra



Series: The Runaways 'Verse [2]
Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Beginnings, Birthday, Childhood, Children, Choices, F/M, Family, Family Drama, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Family Issues, Friendship, Gen, Growing Up, High School, Love, Parent-Child Relationship, University, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-03-25 00:19:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 47,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3789625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultra/pseuds/Ultra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Sequel' to The Runaways - a collection of one-shots showing various moments throughout the lives of Rory & Jess, their son Jack, and all the family & friends surrounding them in Stars Hollow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Baby It’s You - 23rd March 2006

It was almost midnight and Rory was very deliberately awake. It was a little crazy. Jack had only started sleeping through the night a couple of months ago, and for a few weeks Rory had just adored the eight hours of peace, the sheer God-given joy of sleep. Tonight was different. Tonight she had to be awake.

“Jess?” she whispered in the dark. “Jess!” she tried again a little more forcefully, poking him in the shoulder.

“Rory?” he groaned, face half smushed in the pillow and yet he still looked beautiful to his fiancée. “What’s wrong?” he asked, as he finally came to, eyes opening just a fraction to look at her.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she promised with a winning smile that he could just make out in the darkness of their room. “It’s midnight,” she said as her only explanation. “Come on!”

Jess shivered as the covers were unceremoniously dragged from his body and suddenly Rory was up and standing there in her nightwear, waiting for him to move his ass. If he were more awake right now, Jess might have figured on why, but in the haziness that was his brain right now, he hadn’t a clue.

“Rory, what...?” he asked as he crawled to the edge of the bed and let his feet drop out onto the ground.

He was faced by the glowing figures of the clock then and something clicked in his sleep-fogged brain. A smile spread across his lips as he reached out to take the hand Rory offered him and followed her to the door. Pushing his hair out of his face, Jess had his eyes open wide enough to navigate alongside Rory to their son’s room. Sound asleep as any sane person of any age should be at such an hour, Jack would be officially one year old any minute now.

“Happy birthday, little man,” said Rory in a whisper, leaning over the edge of the crib to her baby boy.

Jack shifted a little in his sleep then snuffled and woke himself up. Jess wondered if it was their fault for coming in here in the first place, and yet he had been around Rory and Lorelai enough to actually believe maybe the kid knew this moment was significant and that was why he had awoken.

“Y’know Jack, Grandma Lorelai and me, we kind of had this tradition,” said Rory in a soft voice as she reached to pick him up. “Every time my birthday rolled around, she would come into my room at 4.03am and tell me the story of the night I was born,” she explained, moving to sit with her son cradled in her arms.

Jess joined her, perching on the arm of the comfy chair and just sitting back to listen. He was intrigued by the one story he had maybe never heard from Rory. She often told him tales of life growing up with Lorelai, and he in turn had shared the less happy stories of his own upbringing at the hands of Liz. It seemed she had skipped over the birth story she got from her mom every year, a tradition she obviously wanted to continue with Jack.

“I can’t believe it’s been a year already since that night when I went into the bathroom and suddenly I was stood in this lake that you and me had made! Your Daddy was so calm and cool about it all, as if he would ever be anything else. He got me to the hospital really fast and he stayed with me, holding my hand the whole time, while I screamed and wailed, and tried my very best to get you out into this world. It was a painful experience, no doubt about that. The worst pain I had ever known in my life was that night, but Jack, y’know what? You were worth it. I would go through every second of it all over again for you, because that’s how much I love you and how very special you are to me.”

Jess smiled at her story and the love she spoke of. It was something so hard to put into words, and yet Rory managed it. He leant down to plant a kiss in her hair and sighed.

“You really were made to be a writer, Gilmore,” he told her softly, making her laugh.

“Maybe” she sighed happily as she leant into him. “I’d say it’s just easy to speak from the heart, but I guess we both know that’s not always the case,” she said, looking up at Jess.

“It gets easier in time,” he admitted, looking more at Jack than Rory for a moment. “One year old, kid,” he told the little boy then. “I guess the world’s still a pretty nutty place to you, huh? Yeah, that doesn’t ever really change,” he smiled wryly.

“Ain’t that the truth?” Rory agreed with a chuckle. “But when you find your place in it, this world’s pretty cool too.”

She looked up at Jess and barely got a chance to breathe before he planted a kiss on her lips. Rory didn’t need to ask what it was for, because there didn’t have to be a reason. They loved each other and they both adored their son. Much of the time, it was all that mattered. In this moment, seeing the light shine in Jess’ dark eyes, Rory knew he was thinking just the same.

Her story done, Rory got up to put Jack back in his crib. Jess reached for the boy and she handed him over, watching her fiancé kiss their baby on the head before laying him back down to sleep. Jack had only been partially awake the whole time and was bound to be snoring softly again before they hardly got out of the door.

“Happy birthday, kid,” Jess told him.

Rory took the hand he offered her this time, a reverse of how they had come into the room as they padded back to their own bed and climbed in under the covers. Jess’ arms went automatically around her, pulling her close, and Rory happily threw an arm across his middle, resting her head on his chest with a contended sigh.

“That’s a cool tradition,” he told her, kissing the top of her head. “I dunno how comfortable he’s gonna be as a teenager hearing how Mommy pushed him out into the world, but for now, it’s cool,” he smirked.

Rory didn’t have to see the expression to know it was there, she had learnt to hear it in Jess’ voice. She couldn’t help but wear the same look in that moment.

“You think that was something I was comfortable hearing as a teen?” she asked incredulously. “Being male or female makes no difference, that is always a weird conversation.”

“Don’t doubt it,” Jess agreed, a yawn escaping then. “Weird to think that was all a year ago.”

“Sometimes it seems much longer, and other times it’s like it was just yesterday,” Rory agreed.

“Time is weird that way.”

“Yeah.”

They were both well on their way to being asleep again, at least Rory assumed it wasn’t just her. Jess hand moving lazily up and down her back and the rhythm of his chest rising and falling beneath her head was easing her into a peaceful slumber. His yawning suggested he was headed the same way, and yet Jess eyes weren’t even closed.

“You’re amazing, you know that right?” he asked her softly in the dark. “And I don’t just mean how to you dealt with the pregnancy thing or giving birth to Jack, not even how you deal with being a young mom and everything. You’re amazing because you’re you, Rory. The way you let me back into your life, how things worked out with us... I know it’s all water under the bridge and I’m not supposed to drag stuff up, but all of this, Jack’s birthday and your traditions with Lorelai, and... I dunno, it brings up memories and thoughts I can’t help. I guess what I’m really saying is that I love you, Ror. I swear, you’ll never know how much.”

“I know,” she replied sleepily, tipping her head back to look at him.

“You’re not asleep,” he said, surprised by the fact.

“I was, kind of,” she yawned, “but who could sleep through a speech like that? You really weren’t kidding about the verbal thing coming and going,” she smirked, the expression looking a little too much like him right there in that moment. “Maybe next year you can tell Jack the birth day story. Y’know, from Daddy’s perspective? I never had that.”

Jess only nodded his agreement and leaned down to capture her lips. Rory was totally happy to sink into the moment, the two of them lost in each other within a minute. A year on from the birth of their son, almost two since their reunion, and more than four since they first met, Rory and Jess were as in love now as they had ever been. That was something they could never see changing.


	2. 2. Choices - 30th January 2006

She should be concentrating. It wasn’t as if Rory didn’t know that. Lectures and classes required her full attention if she was ever going to pass and ultimately graduate Yale. It had been tough Freshman year, but she handled it in the end. Of course she always knew that coming back after a whole year out to have a baby, it was going to be tough. She was taking less courses and living off campus, moves designed to make it possible for her to attend Yale and be there for her son. It was working, in the sense that Rory was doing both things, but she wasn’t happy about either situation right now.

One eye was on her cell phone, as it so often was when she was at Yale. It wasn’t that Rory didn’t trust the people watching Jack, because she did. Often he was with Jess, or Mrs Rossini was baby-sitting. Then there was the times when Lorelai, Luke, or even Lane would take a turn. These were people that Rory trusted with her own life and so she certainly trusted them with Jack, that wasn’t the issue. The problem was that she was missing things.

Jack started trying to talk earlier than most babies would. Nobody was surprised, after all, he was half Gilmore. Rory spent hours encouraging him to say Momma first, whilst Jess challenged her authority by forcing the issue on Dadda. It was like a running joke, but they both wanted to win. They started on other words after that, Rory saying that Jack would manage ‘Rand’ long before he could get his little tongue around ‘Hemingway’. They spent a lot of time trying to get a whole real word out of Jack, and for so long it was nothing but gurgles and nonsense. Then one day it happened. Jess picked his son up out of his carry seat and Jack proclaimed ‘Dadda’ for all to hear. All except Rory. She had been at Yale and missed the whole thing. It broke her heart to know she had missed such an important moment. Jess tried to tell her it was fine, that it easily could’ve happened the other way around, because Jack could’ve spoken to Rory first whilst Jess was working. It didn’t make her feel better, not one bit. Jess had to work, because they had to have money. Rory didn’t have to go to Yale, and more and more she started to wish she hadn’t made this choice.

The last week, Jack had started trying to stand and walk. He would pull himself up against the furniture, fingers holding on tight to the edge of the coffee table or the side of the couch. He couldn't balance on his own yet, but it was going to happen soon, Rory just knew it. Jack had come so close this morning before she left Mrs R in charge of her baby and headed to school. Now she was constantly checking her cell for a text to say it had happened.

Jess would be home by now, Rory thought, as she glanced at her watch. This was her second class of the day and her fiancé had been at the diner extra early for inventory and the breakfast rush. He would be home now for a break whilst Lane did a shift over lunch, and then head back in later when Rory got home from Yale. If Jack decided to stand up for Daddy, she would miss another milestone. Rory’s heart clenched in her chest. She was hearing nothing of what the professor was saying, not a word, and she just didn't care.

The phone vibrated in her hand and Rory’s eyes returned to the screen. Jess had sent her a text with a video attached. The message said only ‘Almost’ and when she hit play on the video Rory saw her little boy stood up under his own steam, almost getting momentum for the first step before falling on his behind and laughing at his own tumble. Rory wanted to laugh too and cry at the same time, having some sort of epiphany in this strange moment of focus.

“Miss Gilmore!” the professor called on her and she looked up fast to see an annoyed man staring in her direction. “I really am going to have to ask you to put the cell phone away now.”

Rory shook her head.

“No,” she said definitely, weirdly amused by the shock that registered on his face.

“I beg your pardon?” the professor checked.

“No,” Rory repeated firmly, getting up from her seat and gathering her things together. “I’m sorry, but no. I shouldn’t be here,” she said with a perfectly reasonable manner and smile.

“Miss Gilmore!” the professor called behind her as she tripped down the stairs between rows of her fellow students and headed for the door. “I hope you understand, there are no make-ups on this class...”

“No, you don’t understand,” she said, turning to face him at the last. “I don’t want to make-up the class. It’s not that I shouldn’t be here in this room right now, I shouldn’t be here at all. I have a baby at home, a son. His name is Jack and today he’s probably going to stand by himself for the very first time,” she explained, waving her cell phone around they had shown her evidence of that fact moments before. “And where am I? Right here at Yale. It’s not where I belong. Maybe I did before, but... but not now. I’m done,” she shrugged easily and then was gone, right out of the door.

Rory expected to feel upset or angry about her situation, but as she headed on down the halls towards the exit, she felt none of these things. All she did feel was a lightness and a freedom the like of which she never did expect. For so long, she wanted to attend Harvard and then switched her focus to Yale. Still, she was certain she wanted and needed that further education. Everything changed last year when she found out she was pregnant. Her world shifted, and though she was still interested in journalism and writing in general, it wasn’t her main focus. Her family mattered more, the changing world of her baby boy came first. Maybe some mothers could handle both, and that was great, but not Rory. She just didn't want to be here anymore.

“Hey, Rory!” a voice called behind her and she turned right by the exit to see Logan running up to meet her. “Wait a second...”

“Logan, I need to go,” she insisted when he closed the door she had been about to open.

“I get it, I do,” he told her definitely. “Y’know there was a lot of talk around this place about you last year, the pregnant drop out girl and all,” he explained awkwardly. “You know how it is with rumours and everything, and I sure do because there have been enough about me.”

“Do you have a point, Logan?” she asked, eager to leave.

“I do,” he nodded. “Rory, you know if you walk out that door they’re really not going to let you back in, at least not any time soon. I get that your kid matters a lot to you and he should, but just think about what you’re doing before you go ahead and lose this chance.”

He meant well, Rory knew that. A lot of people looked at Logan Huntzberger and saw a person that only cared about himself. In a lot of ways that might be true. He was rich and privileged, and he did like his own way, but Rory had got to know him a little over the last few months attending Yale together. Logan wasn’t all bad, and he was one of the people who had been nicer than most to Rory. All the rumours and stories, the fact that she had skipped a year to have a baby, some people were judgemental, but Logan was oddly kind. That’s how Rory knew he meant well right now, but it didn’t change the fact she had to leave.

“Thank you, Logan,” she told him, offering a hand for him to shake. “You’ve been a great friend these past few months, but I really do have to go. I didn’t think anything could matter more than my career and Yale, but I found something that really does.”

Rory smiled genuinely as Logan shook her hand and then raised it to his lips to kiss her knuckles.

“You’re one of a kind, Gilmore,” he told her definitely. “I hope that boyfriend of yours understands that.”

“Fiancé” she corrected, retracting her hand and pushing open the door. “And yes, I’m pretty sure he does.”

* * *

Rory drove home just as fast as the speed limit would allow, pulling into a spot outside the apartment building and pelting inside. She came crashing through the front door in time to see Jack standing under his own steam with Jess on the floor beside him, applauding the achievement.

“Oh my God!” Rory gasped at the sight, surprising her son enough that he toppled backwards onto his butt again.

Jess looked up at Rory a second, before tossing his cell into the armchair and moving across the carpet to check on Jack.

“You okay, little buddy?” he asked the boy. “Yeah, you’re fine, right?” he said, offering a high five.

Jack knew high five very well already and threw his chubby little hand towards Jess’ own with a giggle.

“I made it,” said Rory as she came over and sunk down onto the carpet beside Jess. “I wasn’t sure if I would but... I’m so proud of you!” she told Jack, gathering him up in her arms for a big hug.

Jess watched the scene with a smile, but he knew something was wrong here. Rory had a class today and she would’ve text and let him know if it cancelled or something, she always had before when plans changed. Besides, it was obvious she had been crying long before she got here and shed happy tears over Jack’s achievement in standing up alone.

“Ror?” he checked. “What happened?” he asked over Jack’s head.

“I kind of quit Yale today,” she admitted softly, feeling a little weird about saying it out loud. “Jess, I know you’re going to say you don’t understand and that I’m crazy to throw away my life like this but... but it’s not my life anymore, at least not right now. Jack should be my focus, he is my focus. I can’t be there when in my heart I know I want to be here. I don’t want to keep missing things, first words, first steps, all the milestones. Jess, I need to be with my son.”

“Hey, it’s okay,” he told her, moving to put his arms around both Rory and Jack together. “I get it, I do,” he promised, kissing her temple as he held her tight. “It’s your life, Rory, and your decision. If you don’t want to be at Yale, I’m the last person who would tell you that you should be.”

Rory knew that. Jess always said she should do whatever she wanted to do, be whoever she wanted to be. It was an opinion they shared, but with all the planning and such that had gone into making this work, making it possible for Rory to go to school around bringing up a baby, she just felt strange about throwing in the towel.

“It’s not like you’re quitting because it got too rough for you,” said Jess softly. “You just got a better offer,” he smirked as she looked up at him. “This little guy can be a hell of a distraction for the best of us,” he said, ruffling Jack’s fine hair.

The little boy reached up to remove his father’s hand and giggled at the game borne out of snatching at Jess’ fingers. 

“Dadda!” he exclaimed happily, playing around, and then he looked at Rory and threw himself bodily back into her lap. “Momma!”

Her eyes went wide at the sound of that word, and then filled with new but entirely happy tears as she hugged him.

“Yes, baby. I’m Momma,” she confirmed happily. “And I love you so much.”


	3. Married, with Children - 3rd June 2006

“Oh, Rory. Is this really happening?” asked Lorelai as she faced the full length mirror wearing her wedding dress and veil.

“Pretty sure,” her daughter agreed as she appeared at her side.

“And speaking of pretty. We’re making quite the picture,” Lorelai smiled, wrapping an arm around her waist.

Rory leant her head on her mother’s shoulder a little, mindful of crushing any part of either of their dresses or carefully done hairstyles. For a pair of mothers, they looked quite glamorous today, and in the end it hadn’t taken too much work. Certainly the way they were smiling made them look all the more beautiful. This was definitely a day to be happy.

“I can’t believe you made this dress,” said Rory of her own gown. “How you had time between the inn and all the wedding plans and helping out with Jack...”

“Hey, for you, I make time,” Lorelai insisted, moving to smooth out the long flowing skirt of the amethyst dress she had hand-made for her maid of honour. “Besides, it’s one thing to be a bridesmaid, and Sookie, Lane, and April do look gorgeous in their store-bought dresses, but honey, you’re my maid of honour, my best friend, my daughter, and most important, the mother of the most gorgeous little man at my wedding!”

Rory giggled at the last title that seemed so silly compared to the rest, but then that was her mom. Lorelai’s hand went to her daughter’s face even as a tear slid down Rory’s cheek.

“I couldn’t be happier for you, Mom,” she said, unable to keep from sniffling. “And I am so proud of you too. I know that’s usually something that parents say to their kids, but I’m so proud to be your daughter, you have no idea.”

“Thanks, kid,” said Lorelai softly, trying to keep her own emotions in check. “Oh, come on, we gotta get back to the happy here.”

“I am happy!” Rory insisted, as she wiped away her tears.

“Yeah, well, tell it to your face because it’s about to look like the ass end of a zebra!”

They both laughed at that and were quick to fix their faces and check their appearance in the mirror one more time. Lane came in just as they got done and gasped at the sight of them.

“Wow, you guys are just... Wow!” she said again. “Luke’s not going to know what hit him. Jess either actually,” she winked at Rory.

“You look beautiful too, Lane,” her best friend assured her.

“Thanks,” she blushed. “Um, I actually came up to let you know that your parents have arrived, Lorelai, and also Jess is here.”

“Jess?” Rory echoed with a frown. “Oh, um, I’ll go talk to him.”

She hurried away, careful to lift her dress so she didn’t trip on it. Rory wanted to get moving before her mother started to ask questions, expressing concern that the best man was here. As far as Rory was concerned, there was simply no chance that Luke had gotten cold feet or anything like that, but she did worry that something else might have gone wrong on a day that she wanted to be as perfect as possible for her mom.

The living room was packed as Rory carefully descended the stairs. Her grandparents were on the couch, looking around the room awkwardly. Sookie was in the armchair with Martha in her lap, leaving Jess to hover in between the furniture with Jack on his hip. As Rory arrived on the scene, she saw Emily reaching up to Jack, but he wasn’t playing ball and stubbornly kept his face buried in his father’s shoulder.

“Hi, everybody,” said Rory as she entered the room.

Richard stood immediately to greet her.

“Oh, Rory. My dear, you look quite beautiful.”

“Thanks, grandpa,” she smiled, leaning in to give him a hug. “But wait until you see Mom.”

“I think I should go up and see her now,” said Emily, getting up and moving towards the stairs before Rory could stop her. “As mother of the bride I’m sure I’m entitled, and besides, I’m not wanted down here.”

Rory winced at her tone and walked over to Jess, noting her grandpa had followed his wife. Sookie excused herself to Rory's old room because Martha was hungry, leaving the youngest couple alone with their son.

“Please tell me nothing serious has happened,” said Rory with a heaving sigh.

“Nothing with the wedding exactly,” Jess agreed. “But before we get to that...” he said then, wrapping an arm around Rory’s waist and suddenly pulling her incredibly close to kiss her lips. “You look gorgeous,” he told her definitely the second they parted.

Rory felt giddy from the sudden kiss and the very serious compliment, but she liked it.

“Thank you,” she told him. “You don’t look so bad yourself,” she assured Jess, adjusting his tie. "You know I always liked this suit."

"Yes, I do recall," he smirked.

“So, Luke is okay?” she checked then, right back onto wedding panic in a second.

“He’s good, he just got a little crazed on the phone, yelling at some relatives who cancelled last minute,” he explained, complete with eye roll. “I don’t even know who these people are, but the crazy got Jack all wound up and he was yelling for his Momma. Of course, by the time I got all the way over here he stopped and is now my very own shoulder limpet,” he said more to the little boy than to Rory. “C’mon, buddy, Mommy’s here. You wanted to see her,” he reminded Jack who then turned his head to peek at Rory.

“What’s up, little man?” she asked him. “Did Grandpa Luke’s yelling make you Mr Grumpy Pants?” she said as Jack pulled his fist out of his mouth at last and reached for his mother.

Rory took him into her arms and gave him a big hug.

“Aaaw, you get your grumpy fits from Daddy, don’t you, baby?” she said with a smirk Jess would’ve been proud of as she bounced him a little on her hip. “But Mommy happens to be really good at getting the Mariano men out of any deep funk they get themselves into.”

Her infectious laughter and happy tone got to Jack in a moment. He was soon back to being his usual carefree self and Jess couldn’t help the smile that spread across his own face either. He perched on the arm of the couch just watching his fiancée and son together. They were his whole world and he never loved two people more. 

“What?” asked Rory when she caught him staring with the oddest grin on his face.

“I was just thinking, maybe I should ask the great Emily Gilmore how long a person has to wait before getting married after their uncle and fiancée’s mother just tied the knot,” he said casually. “I mean, Miss Manners probably has a view on that, right? I’m just hoping it's not too long, because honestly? If it wasn’t the worst movie cliché in history, I’d run right out there now and ask them to make it a double ceremony.”

Rory couldn’t believe what she was hearing and it showed on her face as she took in Jess’ words. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know he was committed to her or that she was unaware he planned on marrying her. He had proposed way back when she was just five months pregnant and made a Christmas gift of the ring she still wore now to seal the agreement. Still, they had always known a wedding would be a long way off. First she was pregnant and then Jack was born. They were a little tight on their money and Rory was meant to be at Yale for the next three years following her son’s birth. That had all fallen through and now she was back to working part time at the book store, taking care of Jack as much as possible. Their lives were happy and content just as they were, but Rory couldn’t deny that she would love the chance to stand up in front of all those she knew and loved, just as Luke and Lorelai were going to do today, and proclaim a love that she had never been more sure of.

“You seriously want to get married soon?” she checked. “For real?”

Jess smirked at her shock that he ought to have expected. He wasn’t offended by it, they both knew he had commitment issues in the past and that they were long gone now, but men in general tended to have a rep for avoiding marriage as much as possible. Well, Jess was done waiting. Getting off the arm of the couch, he dropped down onto one knee and took Rory’s free hand in his own.

“I’m not saying today or this week, but in the next few months, definitely before this year is out, Lorelai Leigh Gilmore, will you marry me?”

“Dadda!” cried Jack, reaching down to him and messing up his carefully styled hair.

Both his parents laughed and Rory cried at the same time.

“Jess, you know I will,” she told him, encouraging him to get up so she could kiss him.

“Oh my... You guys!” Sookie exclaimed excitedly as she rushed over to congratulate them. “I’m so sorry that I bust in on your little re-proposal moment, but this is so great! Another wedding this year! So exciting!” she enthused.

“I think maybe we should get _this_ wedding done before we start seriously planning the next one,” said Rory, sniffing back further tears. “Oh, I have to go get cleaned up again, and you should get back to Luke, he’ll be frantic without you,” she told Jess.

“He’s pretty jumpy today whether I’m there or not. He just wants this to go right, y’know? It’s been a long time coming.”

“All the best stuff is,” his fiancée assured him, handing Jack over.

He went willingly to his father this time, and everything seemed to be settled just at the right moment. Jack waved bye bye to his mother for now, and no sooner was Jess out the front door than Lane and Emily came padding down the stairs with Richard and Lorelai following them. 

“Oh, sweetie, you look amazing!” Sookie gasped. “So beautiful, I just... I promised myself I couldn’t cry until after the ceremony,” she said, voice growing higher in pitch with every word as she fought tears.

“Aaaw, Sook, come on, hold it together,” Lorelai urged her. “If you go, we all go and then how will we look?”

“Like zebra’s asses apparently,” Rory joked, not even caring that her grandmother looked so shocked.

“Are you ready, my dear?” Richard asked Lorelai then, as Rory rushed to fix her make-up and Lane called ahead to ensure everything was ready in the square.

“Couldn’t be more ready, Dad,” she said definitely and with the most genuine smile anyone had seen on her face in years.

“Okay, Mrs R says Anna has arrived with April, Jess and Luke are in position, and we are good to go!” Lane confirmed the moment she ended her call.

It was time.

* * *

“Do you, Lucas William Danes, take Lorelai Victoria Gilmore to be your lawfully wedded wife?” said the registrar.

Luke was listening enough to know what was being asked of him, but for the most part, his concentration was on Lorelai. She was so beautiful, inside and out, and never more so than today. He couldn’t imagine a happier moment than this, right here in the town square, handing his heart to the woman he loved and receiving hers in return. Friends and family were all around them, the most important for Luke being Rory, Jess, and baby Jack. No day, no moment, could be better than this one.

“I do,” he said at the right time, and then listened as Lorelai was asked if she would take him to be her husband too.

“I do. A lot,” she said with a grin, the way only Lorelai could.

There was a murmur of laughter through the congregation, but the couple getting married barely heard. The only words that met their ears were the registrar announcing they were husband and wife, at last. He didn’t even manage to get as far as telling Luke he may kiss the bride because he was already doing it.

Music started to play then, and the happy couple turned to walk back down the aisle together. Rory took Jess’ arm and they followed behind, with Lane carrying baby Jack right on their heels, and Sookie and April bringing up the rear.

“Finally,” said Jess, quietly enough that only Rory would hear.

“It’s been a long time coming,” she smiled, leaning into him. “Jess, were you serious about...?”

“Yes,” he replied before she even finished the question. “I want to marry you, Rory, sooner rather than later. Women love Summer weddings, right?”

“I have no idea, but it sounds good to me,” she assured him, planting a kiss on his cheek as they continued walking.

Today had been a beautiful day so far, and Rory knew that her own special day with Jess would be just as good. She was already getting excited about it, but now wasn’t the time to mention it. This was her mom and Luke’s day, and Rory couldn’t be more pleased for them.


	4. The Best Recipe - 22nd March 2007

Rory Gilmore was a crazy person. This was the conclusion she had come to about herself as she stood in the kitchen of her home, surrounded by ingredients that were apparently supposed to go into a cake. Rory had never once in her life baked anything. There were severe rules about her and use of such things as ovens and other implements that were meant for preparing food. Jess went so far as to call her a liability, and though Luke never used that word, he was always quick to cut in whenever Rory even suggested she might try to cook. For a long time, she just accepted her shortcomings. Rory was good at a lot of things, as was Lorelai, but neither had any kind of gifts when it came to kitchen tasks. They lived off Luke, off Sookie, off Jess. Well, today was going to be different.

“I am a mother,” said Rory definitely. “And I am capable of baking my son a birthday cake. I have instructions, it can’t be that hard,” she told herself, consulting the print out of a webpage on the counter.

There were plenty of other people who could have provided a cake for Jack. Sookie had made a beautiful one for the baby shower before he was born, and for Jack’s first birthday, Luke had done the honours. Either of them would have happily supplied a cake this year, or Jess could do it just the same. There were stores Rory could go to; Fran had passed away but Westons still provided the most wonderful cakes in town. The thing of it was not that Rory had to make this cake herself, but moreover that she wanted to.

If asked to explain why, Rory would say she didn’t know, but in her heart of hearts, that was untrue. Giving up Yale for Jack had been one of the best decisions she ever made because it gave her a chance to spend more time with her son, to be there for all the important moments, and yet Rory felt she was still missing something. There was nothing specific that she did for her child. He was such a Daddy’s boy most of the time, loving to have stories read to him by Jess, wanting only him to help as he learnt to dress himself and build towers out of blocks. Rory tried not to mind too much. It was a boy thing, she supposed, and it wasn’t as if Jack didn’t love her too. All the hugs and kisses she received, all the times he followed her around the apartment asking questions, he loved his Momma dearly. Still, Rory wanted there to be something that she had done, something specifically from her. Maybe that was wrong or selfish, she wasn’t sure, but she wanted to do it anyway. She wanted to conquer baking for the sake   
of her son.

“Okay, butter, sugar,” she said to herself as she checked the contents of the bowl. “Cream together. What’s cream mean?” she asked the recipe, which of course gave her no answer.

Rushing to the laptop set up on the table, Rory searched for definitions of cream, and to some extent wished she hadn’t when beyond the noun meaning dairy products she got some unsavoury results for verbs that definitely had nothing to do with baking! At last she found the right answer on a page that was essentially a glossary of cookery terms. Rory hooked the laptop to the printer in the corner and hastily got a copy of that page too. Now she felt better prepared.

One stage of the recipe was swiftly followed by another, as Rory weighed each ingredient carefully, creamed, beat, folded, and layered. By the time she got the cake batter into the pans and then into the oven, she was feeling pretty good about the whole thing. She put all the utensils and bowls into the sink to wash, but abandoned them before she ever started cleaning. Grabbing the phone she called Paris’ number. She had been meaning to call her for days now and just hadn’t quite gotten around to it. Now seemed like a good time, because as awful as it sounded, the oven timer sounding would mean she was forced to cut the conversation short if she needed to. That seemed ungracious but honestly, Paris could be a little overly much sometimes and Rory may need some kind of excuse to get off the phone. As it turned out, her friend was actually in a pretty happy and chatty mood. Rory didn’t even notice that the timer never sounded when it should.

* * *

Jess was in a pretty good mood when he arrived back at the apartment. Tomorrow was Jack’s second birthday, and everything was planned out so he and Rory could spend the day with their son, no work to worry about. Lorelai and Luke, Mrs R, everybody was due to be seen at various points during the day, but for the most part it was just going to be the three of them. Jess loved days like that.

For now, Jack was with his Aunt Lane. She said she needed the practice now she knew she was expecting herself, and Jess didn’t mind a little alone time with Rory either. They got precious little of that, and so Jess decided to take full advantage of a childless afternoon alone with his wife. He had brought her a large coffee from Luke’s and a copy of the latest book she had been wanting to buy. Rory was going to be happy and grateful, neither of which were bad things in her husband's eyes.

Everything went decidedly downhill when Jess opened up the apartment door and saw black smoke floating out from the next room.

“Rory!” he yelled in a panic, barely managing to close the door behind him as he pelted towards the kitchen. “Rory?!”

He skidded in the hallway almost missing the door entirely. That was when Jess saw Rory, sitting in the middle of the tiled floor, sobbing her heart out. The oven door was open though the power seemed to be off. There were two cake pans sitting in there still, with what he assumed was going to be two halves of a birthday cake. What actually existed in there were two round charcoal briquettes, at least that was the only way Jess could find to describe them.

“What happened?” he asked, even though he supposed it ought to be obvious.

“I’m a useless mother, that’s what happened!” Rory yelled hopelessly. “What kind of mother can’t even bake a cake for her two year old’s birthday? I mean, seriously, what kind of mother?”

“Er, yours?” Jess tried for both truth and humour, but the joke clearly fell flat.

Sinking down to his knees in front of Rory, he abandoned the coffee and the book without a thought and reached to pull his wife into his arms.

“I’m sorry, Ror,” he told her, kissing the top of her head. “But it really doesn’t matter. It’s just a cake, and Jack’s not even old enough to know about it.”

“But I want him to know!” she said crossly, pulling out of his grasp. “I did everything right, Jess, I did. I creamed and folded and weighed everything perfectly, but you know what it turns out I can’t do? Me, the valedictorian of Chilton’s 2003 graduating class? I can’t work a damn oven timer!” she yelled in frustration. “I was talking to Paris on the phone and the stupid thing didn’t go off and... and now everything’s ruined!”

She burst into noisy sobs all over again, leaning on Jess and soaking his shirt with her tears. Something bigger than a burnt cake had happened here, he knew that for sure. Rory was prone to bouts of emotional distress, but never this bad, at least not since Jack was born. A thought occurred to him, but he dismissed it as crazy immediately, literally shaking his head.

“Rory, not being able to bake a cake or set an over timer or whatever you did, it does not make you a lousy mother, okay?” he told her, taking her face in his hands and making her meet his eyes. “You are the very best mom. You know this.”

She sniffed hard and tried for a smile that didn’t quite come out straight.

“I don’t feel like it,” she sighed. “Why couldn’t I get this one thing right when it was so important?”

“Why was is so important?” asked Jess, completely at a loss. “You do a hundred things for Jack and he adores you, why are you so hung up on a birthday cake?”

“Because!” Rory yelled, feeling the tears well in her eyes again. “Because I have to be a better mother if we’re going to raise two kids!”

Jess forgot to breathe in that moment. Two kids. That’s what Rory had said, ‘if we’re going to raise two kids’. As if it hadn’t been enough of a shock when she fell pregnant with Jack, now it seemed Rory was telling him there was another baby on the way. That crazy thought he'd had a couple of exits back seemed to be ringing true.

“How?” he asked, clarifying the question when he saw the incredulous look on her face. “I mean, we’re always... Rory, you’ve been on the pill since right after Jack was born.”

“All I can think is it was around the time when I had that stomach flu thing,” she explained helplessly. “I just didn’t think about it at the time, but I’m guessing the stuff didn’t stay in my system, and then that next day I felt so much better and you were wearing that suit...”

“I remember,” Jess smiled slightly at the vivid memory that came to him of that very night. “I just didn’t realise we were making a baby.”

“Me either,” Rory agreed. “I only started to think maybe a few days ago but it seemed so unlikely. I got a store bought yesterday, I was going to tell you so we could both be there but then last night got a little crazy with Jack having a tantrum and April calling and... well, then this morning I just couldn’t wait anymore, I had to know.”

“And then because you realised you were gonna have two kids you decided you needed to be Jane Asher,” said Jess with a look. “Y’know you’re becoming more like your mother every day? And by that I mean a crazy person,” he teased her.

“How can you joke, Jess?” she asked him sadly. “I’m pregnant. We’re going to have two kids before the first one is three. That’s insane!”

“It is insane,” he agreed. “But it’s kinda cool too,” he admitted then. “I mean, being an only child, it was fine for us, but do we really want that for Jack? I know he has the biggest extended family on the planet, but a little brother or sister, that’d be cool, right?”

Rory smiled at the picture that formed in her mind. Her baby boy meeting an even younger sibling. The two of them growing up to be good friends, looking out for each other their whole lives. It was a beautiful image, but it might not be realistic.

“It’s going to be hard work,” she frowned instantly she thought on it. “Jess, the money, the tiny apartment, and just coping with two kids at once. We barely get a spare minute as it is.”

“And you love it,” he countered. “C’mon, tell me you don’t? Because I do. Rory, I never pictured my life turning out this way, not at all, but I do love it. I have you and Jack, and whether what comes next is a boy or a girl, I’m going to love that kid too. We can do this, Rory. Haven’t you figured it out yet? You and me together, we can do anything.”

This time when Rory cried it was very happy tears as she hugged Jess tight and then pulled back to see his face and kiss his lips.

“I love you,” she declared definitely.

“And I love you,” he replied, tucking her hair behind her ear. “But seriously, can we get up of the floor now? Because my ass is cold.”

Rory laughed heartily as they helped each other up off the tile. Jess bent down to grab the coffee and the book he had dumped on the floor earlier. He handed Rory her new reading material but kept the hot drink away from her.

“This will be going down the drain,” he told her definitely, not even caring when she pouted. “You’re back on the decaff, sweetheart.”

Jess moved over to the oven next and picked the cake pans out of there, complete with charred and inedible cake inside. He considered how he was going to get the disaster out of the tins and clean them up, eventually deciding it just wasn’t worth it and dumped them both into the trash.

“I really, really wanted to get that cake right,” Rory sighed heavily.

Jess looked around at the devastation that was his kitchen. Most of the utensils and bowls they would need were in the sink, unwashed. The ingredients were more than half used up, and he’d just dumped the cake pans. The easiest answer was to say they would just go to the store and buy a cake, but one look at Rory’s sad face changed his mind.

“Okay,” he sighed, pushing his hair back with one hand. “I will make this place look like a kitchen again, you run to the store, get new cake pans and more flour, sugar... everything on your list,” he said, handing the recipe sheet to Rory, chocolate spattered as it was. “Then, you and me, we will bake a cake, okay?”

“Really?” she said, eyes lighting up at the suggestion. “You think it’ll work if you help?” she asked, wrapping her arms around Jess from behind as he filled the sink with water to wash up.

“Rory, you have no idea how hard I’m trying not make the really obvious joke about buns in ovens right now.”

That got a burst of laughter out of his wife, as Rory buried her head between his shoulder blades and hugged him tighter. To think she was so worried about finding out she was pregnant for a second time. She really shouldn’t have been so concerned. Sure it was going to be hard work, but Jess was happy, she was happy. Everything was going to be okay, one way or another, just like always.


	5. Daddy Issues - 4th August 2007

It was all a little too familiar for Luke. He wondered if it even occurred to Jess that they had done this all before. Sure, it was a good five years ago now, but the circumstances were awfully similar when considered in relative terms. For all that his nephew had suffered at the hands of others, Luke knew that the person who did the very best job of beating Jess up was himself when he took to self-flagellation.

There were no words to be said as Luke wandered onto the bridge and lowered himself down to sit beside his nephew. It was the first time he had seen him with a cigarette in his hand since Jack was born, and that only proved how much he was hurting. Smoking was his go-to remedy for the problems life threw at him, and none more so than those he either caused himself or perceived that he had caused.

“I never meant to do it. That doesn’t mean I’m not an asshole and everything, but I really didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“Jess...”

“Don’t tell me it’s okay, Luke. Please, just don’t.”

“What? You’d rather just beat yourself into submission for something that was barely your fault, is that it? It just suits you to be a martyr, doesn’t it? Well, tough luck, Jess, because you don’t get to play that card. You’re not a monster.”

“You weren’t there.”

“No, but your wife was.”

That made it worse. Jess closed his eyes as if that would help him not to think about that moment, not to see the looks on the faces of those he loved most. Nothing blocked out the pictures in his head. He never really expected it to. Honestly, Luke thought maybe Jess was actually fighting tears right now. Wouldn’t be the first time he bore witness to that either.

“You remember another day when I found you on this bridge?” he asked his nephew, looking out across the water. “Same set up as this, ‘cept the hour was later. There you were, cigarette in your hand, grim expression just like now, and what was the first thing you said to me?”

“I don’t know,” said Jess, opening his eyes but never looking at his uncle as he flicked ash into the water.

“You said ‘I made sure she was okay’,” he reminded him easily. “The only thing on your mind was Rory and the only thing you cared about was making sure she was okay.”

“That was different, that was an accident...”

“And so was this,” his uncle cut in before he could go any further. “Jess, you didn’t do a terrible thing.”

“Luke, just don’t!” he cut him off unceremoniously, complete with cutting motion of his hand. “You don’t know, okay? You weren’t there and... You would never have done that. You would never have thrown a kid half way across a room just because he wanted a little attention. That’s not you.”

Far from being any more sympathetic than before, Luke just got mad at this point. 

“And that’s not you either, Jess!” he told him sternly, a growl sneaking into his tone as he put his hand on his nephew’s shoulder and made him meet his eyes. “You did not hit that little boy, and I know for damn sure that you never, ever would. Rory told me what happened. She walked in right in time to see and it was nothing like what you’re thinking,” he said definitely.

“You didn’t hear him crying, Luke. You didn’t see the look on his face,” said Jess, tears welling in his eyes. “He’s my son, Luke, mine, and he was looking at me like I...”

He couldn’t finish. He didn’t have to. It was true enough that he never intended to hurt Jack at all. Sure, he was getting aggravated by a string of circumstances today. He had been trying to deal with some stuff for the diner and had got nowhere fast with either a supplier he had contacted or the guy that was supposed to come in and take a look at the stove which had been playing up. It was a stupidly hot day, which never suited Jess at the best of times, and Jack had chosen this particular day to question just about everything. He constantly wanted Daddy’s attention, and every answer was met with a further ‘Why?’, over and over and over. It was driving Jess crazy and when he turned around fast without thinking...

“I didn’t know he was standing that close,” he said sadly. “I just, I turned so fast, yelling at him for bugging me and then he’s just there on his ass, looking at me like some kind of monster,” he explained, staring unseeing into the water. “I can’t blame him.”

“Jess, he doesn’t think that,” said Luke, shaking his head, his hand on Jess’ back in some kind of comforting gesture. “You know Jack loves you and so does Rory. Neither of them thinks you’re that guy. They know you’re not. I know you’re not. Hell, even your father wasn’t that guy, a whole bunch of other things I won’t mention, but never that,” he promised.

Jess sniffed hard and looked away a moment. Luke ploughed on regardless.

“Hey, now I know you can be handy with your fists if some guy starts a fight or whatever else. I’ve been known to mix it up myself in my younger days,” he admitted with a sigh. “But Jess, we all know you would never, ever raise a hand to Jack or Rory or anybody that you love. Only you seem to be thinking that, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.”

Jess could explain, at least he thought he could. Jimmy and Luke, they weren’t the kind for domestic violence, and Jess would like to say he wasn’t either. Unfortunately, he had seen his share from various so-called uncles and step-fathers over the years. What Liz had suffered, what Jess himself had been through, he feared becoming one of those animals, someone whose anger was quicker than their good sense. Now more than ever it scared him, with Rory carrying ther second child and all, there was so much to lose. Like Luke had said, Jess was handy enough with his fists in days gone by, quick to swing at the Chuck Presbys and Dean Foresters of the world. He hated to think he was capable of hurting anyone who really mattered, those he loved most in the world and had sworn to protect with everything he had.

“I screwed up,” he said as much to himself as to Luke. “I thought I hated myself for what I did to Rory before, running out on her, leaving without a goodbye every time. At least I could put that down to being a dumb teen, but I can’t anymore. If I thought for a second that I really hurt that kid, Luke, I couldn’t... I couldn’t live with myself,” he told him desperately.

Luke shook his head, his hand on the back of Jess’ neck pulling him close for a few seconds.

“And that’s how I know you would never hurt him, or Rory, or the little girl you're gonna have in a few months time,” he promised his nephew. “All this guilt and for nothing more than an accident. Jess, don’t you understand, if you feel this bad for something and nothing, you could never purposefully hurt them, never.”

“You should really listen to him,” said a new voice then.

Jess pulled away from Luke, sniffing hard, dragging a hand across his face before Rory saw the weakness in him. As if knocking Jack on his butt hadn’t been bad enough. Crying about it in front of her would be almost as bad in its way, even after all this time.

“I’m gonna let you two talk,” said Luke as he levered himself up off the edge of the bridge.

He smiled and touched Rory’s arm as he passed by, acknowledging little Jack when the two year old waved at him too. Even after Luke was gone, Jess couldn’t bear to meet Rory’s eyes. His fingers twitched for another cigarette but now she and Jack were here, he knew he couldn’t light one.

“Jess?” she said, sitting down carefully on the bridge.

Rory kept a good hold on her baby boy. One false move and he’d be in the water. Shallow as it was, she’d rather her two year old wasn’t floating in it. Jess forced himself to look then, surprised to see Jack smiling at him from Rory’s embrace.

“I am so sorry,” he told the both of them.

“We know that,” she assured him. “You know Daddy didn’t mean to yell or knock you over, don’t you, honey?” she said to Jack.

He nodded vehemently, still smiling.

“Just a accident,” he shrugged his little shoulders. “Love you, Daddy.”

Jess felt like crying all over again but for very different reasons as he opened his arms to his son and Rory let him toddle the few steps forward into his father’s arms. Watching them hold onto each other just made her want to cry too, but in the best way. Rory wasted no time in moving closer and Jess soon had one arm around each of them, holding on as tight as he dare.

“I’m so sorry. I love you so much,” he whispered, kissing them both, one hand straying to Rory's bump too.

“We love you too,” she promised. “Just, next time, stick around for us to tell you that, okay?”

“Okay,” Jess agreed with a watery smile.

The love he got from her and from Jack would never cease to amaze him for as long as he lived, Jess would fight every day to prove that he deserved the family he had made here, no matter how long it took to do it.


	6. New Girl in Town - 10th January 2006

Jess glanced up just briefly when the diner door opened, causing the bell to jingle loudly, before his eyes returned to Jack. It wasn’t ideal to be taking care of his baby son whilst trying to cover the diner, but it was just the way things had worked out today. Mrs R was on her way to pick up the kid and the diner wasn’t particularly busy right now, but Jack was over-tired and complaining a lot. He needed a nap but here wasn’t the greatest place for it. The bell woke him up again as he knew it would and literally face-palmed before reaching to pick his son up from the carry chair.

“C’mon, man,” he groaned, trying to comfort Jack. “You gotta sleep, or at least not be screaming right now,” he urged the baby who fussed and complained still.

“Hi,” said a voice.

Jess glanced up again to see the kid that had just come in the door and tried not to glare at her, after all, this wasn’t exactly her fault. 

“Hi,” he replied, bouncing Jack on his hip. “Er, if you wanna take a seat, I’ll be with you in a sec, I just...”

The phone started ringing then and Jess felt like he was losing his mind. Usually he couldn’t move for people in this town wanting to help him with Jack, and the one time when he could really use a hand there was nobody around.

“You want me to..?” asked the kid, holding out her arms for the baby. “I’ve helped out with baby-sitting before, I swear it’s okay.”

Jess knew he didn’t have too many choices here. Besides, this girl was all of twelve years old, the geeky type, complete with over-protective bike helmet and large framed glasses. If Jess put Jack back in his chair the crying would get worse and he would try to escape which would definitely not end well. If he didn’t answer the phone and serve customers, the continued noise would only upset the kid anyway.

“Okay,” said Jess, encouraging the girl to sit down before handing Jack over. “Don’t move from that spot,” he said definitely, backing up behind the counter and never taking his eyes off the kids.

Jess answered the phone, only half listening to the guy on the other end who turned out to be a wrong number but wanted to blame Jess for the fact he couldn’t dial. There was a frank exchange of views before Jess hung up the phone with a clang. He turned fast to find the girl from before bouncing Jack on her knees and talking to him about what a cutie he was. There was no more crying, no more tears.

“I’m impressed,” said Jess as he came over. “He’s not usually great with strangers, and today he has definitely turned into the Grump Monster.”

“Aaaaw, I think he’s adorable,” she said with a grin. “You’re just tired, aren’t you, little guy?”

“Jack,” Jess told her. “Er, his name is Jack. I’m Jess.”

“April,” she replied in kind. “I was actually looking for the guy who owns this place.”

“That would be me, at least in part anyway,” he told her, as April got up and handed Jack over. “Me and my fiancé own half, my uncle Luke owns the other half, hence the name,” he explained, holding Jack close and kissing the top of his head.

“Luke is your uncle?” she checked. “Wow.”

Jess didn’t understand why she looked so shocked and amazed, or whatever that expression was that had formed on her face. It sure wasn’t anything less than confused. It added to Jess’ theory that this kid wasn’t from around here. Pretty much everybody in Stars Hollow knew Luke, and by extension his family, including Jess and the Gilmores. Why a young girl was looking for a much older guy that she knew very little about was not at all clear to Jess. Only one possible explanation came to mind and he immediately dismissed it as crazy, deciding instead just to ask for the truth.

“So, you’re looking for Luke, because...?” he prompted.

April followed him across to where Jack’s carry chair sat on the counter. The kid was almost completely asleep now and Jess very carefully laid him down, hoping nothing else would disturb him before Mrs R managed to get here and pick him up.

“I’m conducting an experiment,” April explained. “For the school science fair.”

“About what? Greasy burgers?” asked Jess with a smirk. “The effects of a backwards baseball cap on the middle-aged man?”

“DNA,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders. “Specifically the paternal half of my genetic make-up.”

Jess’ eyes widened at the implications of what April was saying to him. This had to be some kind of joke. No way was she suggesting what Jess thought she was suggesting. He couldn’t possibly have been right in his random and crazy guess as to why April was looking for Luke. It couldn’t be true.

“Er, April? You’re not... You’re not suggesting my uncle, Luke Danes, is your father, are you?” he asked awkwardly.

“Yup, exactly that,” she nodded with a wide smile, apparently not at all phased by any of this, unlike Jess. “There are three possible candidates for my father, at least according to what I could glean from Mom. I’ve already got pictures and samples from the other two, so that just leaves Luke, but I’m guessing he’s not here.”

“Nope, not right now,” Jess confirmed, even as his mind raced with the news he had received.

“Shame you’re his nephew and not his son. I probably could’ve gotten away with a sample from a potential sibling,” she sighed heavily. “Oh well, I’ll just come back tomorrow. Nice meeting you, Jess” she smiled once more as she headed for the door, then quickly doubled back. “Your son is adorable. If you ever need a baby-sitter, call me,” she said, handing over a card.

The next minute she was gone, the jangling of the bell and slamming of the door making Jack stir once more. Jess went straight to him, biting his lip so as not to curse. Today was officially the craziest day ever.

* * *

“Today has been a long day,” sighed Rory when she returned to the living room from putting Jack down for the night. “Take me to bed?” she asked Jess, holding out her arms to him.

“Not a question I need to be asked twice,” he smiled as he came towards her and pulled her close, kissing her lips.

Honestly, Rory really had meant she wanted to go to sleep because she was that tired, but just as soon as Jess started to kiss her and run his hands over her body, she couldn’t help but react. Maybe she had a little energy left after all. Her fingers traced patterns down Jess’ back, pulling his T-shirt free from his pants. One hand slid into the back pocket of his jeans, and that was when Rory stopped. A card came out of his pocket in her hand and curiousity made Rory open one eye to peek at it. Jess noticed she stopped kissing him and paid attention to what she was doing instead.

“Okay,” she said, pulling out of his arms as she studied the card in her hand now. “Why do you have a card in your pocket with a girl’s name and number on it?” she asked sharply.

“Okay, first of all, can you please not yell. Jack is asleep,” he reminded her pointedly. “Second of all,” he continued, as Rory narrowed her eyes at him. “That girl is twelve years old.”

That sure did cause Rory’s eyes to widen, and Jess immediately realised why. He explained very quickly then.

“She’s a babysitter!” he said sharply, though was mindful of keeping his voice low at the same time.

He pulled Rory away from the bedroom door just in case before he told her the whole story.

“The truth is... this kid may also be Luke’s daughter.”

“What?!” Rory squeaked, immediately clamping her hand over her mouth when she realised how loud that had come out.

Shaking her head, she sat down heavily on the couch, staring at the card in her hand. A twelve year old girl who wanted to baby-sit for her son and might actually be borne of Luke? Rory couldn’t take this in at all.

“I wasn't going to tell you yet,” explained Jess, sighing and running a hand over his face as he sat down beside her. “It’s not definite, and personally I thought Luke should hear it first.”

“You haven't told him?” asked Rory, surprised by yet another twist in the story.

Jess rolled his eyes, thinking if hers got any wider they were going to roll clean out of her head.

“I didn't get the chance,” he explained. “He came in with your mom, and somehow I didn't think Luke or Lorelai would appreciate me spilling that kind of news out of nowhere in the middle of the diner.”

Rory looked back at the card in her hand, as if that held all the answers. It didn’t. She couldn’t tell much from the oddly professional looking card. Twelve years old, name of April, and apparently Luke’s daughter.

“Oh man. This is... this is huge,” she said shaking her head.

“No kidding,” Jess agreed, putting his arm around her shoulders and pulling her closer, picking the card out of her fingers with his other hand. “I figured I'll tell Luke and then when he has it all figured out with the kid, he can tell Lorelai or whatever. For all I know, this April has it all wrong. Apparently she has three potential fathers.”

“Three?”

“Yeah, Mommy Dearest, whoever she may be, wasn't exactly a one woman guy,” Jess smirked, though he wasn’t sure why he found it so amusing.

His own mother wasn’t exactly great at sticking with one man but she did at least manage one at a time. Hell, she was even married to Jimmy when Jess was born. April’s mother clearly wasn’t so traditional.

“Yikes. Luke might be a father,” said Rory, still trying to process as she snuggled in closer to Jess. “I mean, he'd be great at it...”

“We know that better than most”

“But this really is... Wow!”

“I see my non-verbal tendencies are rubbing off,” Jess smiled, kissing Rory’s temple.

“Come on, cool guy,” she scoffed, looking up at him. “You must've been plenty shocked when she told you she was Luke's daughter.”

“Potential daughter” he amended. “But yeah, plenty shocking. For one thing it’s a scary reminder that my uncle ever had sex,” he said making a disgusted face.

“Big baby!” Rory laughed, swatting him in the chest for being so dumb, though in truth she was no more enamoured by the idea of imagining Luke getting down and dirty.

They were quiet after that, falling into the usual comfortable silence that came either with reading or like now, being lost in their own thoughts. Jess replayed the scene with April in his mind. She seemed like a cool kid and Jack took to her pretty fast. It wouldn’t be awful for Jess to find out he had a cousin, or for Luke to have an actual biological kid. He did well enough at helping to raise Rory and then straightening out Jess himself. Nobody could be a better father than Luke, Jess was certain on that. If April did turn out to be his daughter, then she was the lucky one, that was for sure.


	7. With This Ring - 5th August 2006

“I feel like we already deja'd this vu,” said Rory as she and her mom stood together in front of the full-length mirror, admiring their dresses for the wedding.

“No, this is a much bigger deal than before,” said Lorelai with a sigh. “I'm not saying my wedding didn’t matter, sweets, because it was one of the most special days of my entire life, but this? This is my baby getting her happy ever after ending. This is the greatest of all the days Stars Hollow has ever seen. This town’s princess is getting married.”

Rory laughed at how silly that sounded, and how sweet it was too. Oddly, it almost made her feel slightly guilty. The whole town had turned out for Luke and Lorelai’s wedding and it was a huge affair in the town square for all to enjoy. Rory hadn’t wanted to be centre of attention quite like that, and she knew for sure that Jess would hate it. They wanted a small ceremony, an intimate occasion with just their closest friends and family. Since there was no way to keep a secret from Stars Hollow at large, Rory and Jess had instead gone with a compromise.

A knock on the door made both Lorelai and Rory spin around and call 'come in' at the same time. Luke came through the door, starting to speak, but quickly stopping when he caught sight of his wife and step-daughter.

“Wow,” he declared as he looked them over. “You two are... You’re beautiful,” he said definitely.

“Hey, we’re always beautiful,” said Lorelai with a smile. “Today we’re wedding beautiful.”

“That I’ll agree with,” her husband nodded as she went into his arms and kissed him hello. “How’s Jess?”

“Weirdly calm,” admitted Luke. “I mean, not that I expect him to be panicking. We all know what you mean to him,” he told Rory definitely. “It’s just, I don’t know, aren’t people supposed to be nervous on their wedding day? Even if they’re sure about it? I was.”

“Me too,” Lorelai agreed. “And this one has been shaking like a leaf from the get go this morning.”

“I have not!” Rory protested. “Well, maybe a little,” she admitted then off her mother’s incredulous look. “I don’t know why. This is what I want. All I ever wanted, in some weird way. It was always Jess.”

“I know, honey,” Lorelai nodded. “I didn’t want it to be true for a very, very long time, but the guy has proven himself. He stepped up when it counted, and now he’s going to make an honest woman of my baby girl,” she said as she came back over to Rory and took both her hands in her own. “Big day.”

“Very big day,” her daughter agreed.

“And as big a day as this is, we probably shouldn’t be late for it,” said Luke, checking his watch. “When I left, Jess was headed to the bridge with Jack, so...”

“So, it’s time,” Rory breathed, taking one last look at herself in the mirror.

She had on a simple but elegant ivory gown, hand made by Lorelai, with some family heirloom lace on the edges that Emily had given her. That covered the old and the new. For borrowed, Rory wore a bracelet Lane had leant to her, and for blue, a garter that Lorelai had been highly amused to present to her in front of Jess. Rory Gilmore was all set, ready to marry the man of her dreams.

“Oh, damn!” Lorelai exclaimed then as her cell phone rang loudly. “Sorry, hon. I thought I turned it off already. It’s Sookie,” she said then as he checked the screen. “It’ll be a last minute reception catering thing... I’ll take it downstairs.”

Lifting up the edge of her flowing blue bridesmaid's dress, Lorelai hurried down the stairs to speak to her best friend. Sookie was in charge of the whole reception and the stress of it probably wasn’t good for her, but she had insisted. She understood Rory wanting an intimate ceremony and actually volunteered to miss the wedding itself in order to take control of the after party, to which every denizen of Stars Hollow and beyond was invited. This was the compromise the happy couple had made. Private ceremony, public reception. It was the best thing for them.

“You really do look beautiful, Rory,” said Luke then as he stood by her at the mirror. “I couldn’t be more proud of you. The fact you asked me to be the one to give you away...”

“Who else would I ask?” she asked as she turned to look at him. “Luke, my dad just... he was never around, never a real part of my life. As much as I love my grandpa, it’s a father’s job to give the bride away,” she smiled then, putting her arm through his own.

She had said something similar when she originally asked him to walk her down the aisle, but hearing it again now, in this moment, dressed up and ready for this very special occasion, it brought a tear to Luke Danes’ eye that he really hadn’t been expecting.

“C’mon, Miss Gilmore,” he said, leaning in to kiss her cheek. “Time to become Mrs Mariano.”

“I’ve never been more ready for anything in my entire life,” she declared happily, meaning every single word.

* * *

The car pulled up just beyond the trees, it was impossible to get any closer to the bridge. Luke had Rory and Lorelai on either side of him, one on each arm as they appeared in view of the small crowd gathered on the other side. Originally, they had considered having the ceremony on the bridge itself, but even a small crowd would be risking someone falling in or worse the bridge collapsing from the weight. Instead it acted as the aisle that would take the bride to her groom.

Reverend Skinner stood with Jess and little Jack in place as best man. Lane held onto his hand, just to be safe, wearing a blue dress quite similar to Lorelai’s own, and Paris was in a more conservative version of the same. The grandparents completed the group, Emily, Richard, and Mrs Rossini too.

As they reached the end of the bridge, Lorelai slipped away from Luke and fell behind the bride and her ‘father’. Lane hit a button on the I-Pod in her free hand, and Rory was caught between laughing and crying as she headed towards Jess to the strains of XTC’s Then She Appeared. For Jess himself, he was hearing nothing, seeing nothing but Rory. He always knew she was beautiful, from the very first moment he laid eyes on her, but right now she had never looked more perfect.

Luke brought the bride to her groom, taking Rory’s hand and putting it into Jess’ own, before both of them turned to Reverend Skinner, and Lane killed the music. It was the most touching moment, broken only when Jack spoke up.

“Hi, Momma!” he greeted Rory happily.

“Hello, baby,” she smiled down at him. “You look very handsome.”

“And Momma pretty,” he grinned, grabbing a handful of her dress and leaning into her.

“Momma very pretty,” Jess agreed in a whisper.

“Daddy very hot in the suit, as always,” she whispered back, blushing when the reverend cleared his throat, clearly having heard all.

The ceremony began then, with rings and vows being exchanged. There had been some debate over what words would be spoken, be they traditional or specific. In the end that had been compromised too. Rory and Jess spoke most of the vows that were traditionally made in marriage ceremonies through the ages, but also wanted the opportunity to say their own thing. Rory went first, a shake in her voice as she gave her speech from memory.

“Jess, I was not expecting to fall in love when I met you. For the longest time, I tried to believe I didn't even like you, but in the end there was no denying that we were meant for each other. It hasn’t been easy, and I don’t except our future to be drama-free because life just isn’t like that, but what I’ve learnt is that there’s nothing we can’t do if we’re together. I love you, Jess, like never before and never again,” she smiled, even as tears welled in her eyes and threatened to fall.

If she had a mind to look, she would've seen that she was surrounded by men and women alike trying not to cry too, and that would only get worse as Jess was asked to speak his piece.

“Rory, I knew from the moment I first saw you that you were the only woman in the world for me. I never felt anything like that before, and I still haven’t. You were different to any other person I ever knew, you always have been, and I guess you always will be. I could quote you a hundred lines about love and commitment from your favourite authors and mine, but I won’t, because this has to be from me to you, and nobody else. I love you, Rory, and no matter what else happens, I can promise to love you forever, because I honestly don’t know how to stop.”

The phrase ‘not a dry eye in the house’ would certainly have become very appropriate in such a moment, if everybody were not outside. Even Reverend Skinner had to take a moment to compose himself before he could speak and finally announce that Jess and Rory be man and wife together.

“You may kiss the bride,” he told Jess who moved in closer and put his lips to Rory’s own.

He seemed to think he was getting away with a sweet little peck since they were in front of Rory’s family and all. She had other ideas and had warned him as much before today. Still, he didn’t think she was serious until her arms wrapped around him and she pulled him to her until he practically toppled over. They were inches away from falling into the water when she finally let go.

“That’s how you seal marriage vows,” she said softly when they parted, grinning all over her face.

Jess leaned closer again to whisper in her ear; “Nope, that happens tonight, in private.”

She shuddered at the suggestion, even after all this time. There was a reason why Jack was sleeping at the Crap Shack tonight. His parents were getting some seriously romantic alone time, no doubt.

Ready to face their public, Jess leaned down to pick up Jack and put him on his hip, then grabbed Rory’s hand and gave her a look as if to say ‘You okay?’. The smile on her face proved she was better than okay, better than good. This was just about as perfect a moment as she could wish for.


	8. Unwanted - 17th September 2005

Luke couldn’t stop looking towards the door every single time the bell rang. He wasn’t always so preoccupied by the comings and goings of the diner, but today he had a particular reason. It wasn’t that he was expecting someone, at least, he knew he had no reason to think today would be the day she showed up. Still, it had been a few days ago now when he spoke to his sister, convincing Liz that maybe now was the time to come back to Stars Hollow and fix things with Jess, meet her grandson. She made some lame joke about her son probably wanting to bury the hatchet in her back, but Luke knew she was just hurting.

One of the them had to make the first move, and given the upset Liz had caused last she was here, it probably had to be her. Jess wouldn’t give an inch unless he had to, and Luke felt that he should at least consider it, for Jack’s sake if nothing else. Not wanting his nephew to be blind-sided, Luke had told Jess in a vague way that he’d been in contact with Liz, and that at some point she might visit. Of course there was no way to say when, since Luke didn’t even know for sure himself. Today, he just had this feeling that the time had come. Liz soon proved him right as the bell over the door jingled one more time, and when Luke looked up, his sister was facing him.

“Hey, big brother,” she said with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Liz,” he greeted her happily, rounding the counter to give her a hug.

She held on tight, even longer than usual, possibly gaining strength from knowing Luke was there for her, even after everything. She was his sister, nothing was ever going to change that. He loved her no matter how difficult she could be, and Luke knew she was sorry for what happened last Thanksgiving with Jess. Now they just had to convince him of her apology.

Luke went over to the curtain and bellowed up to his nephew, asking him to come down. Liz moved to a seat at the counter and waited nervously. Jess could soon be heard grumbling about being woken up. Luke knew he had gone upstairs to catch a nap after a particularly bad night with Jack, so what was with all the yelling? Just as soon as he cleared the curtain and saw Liz, his demeanour changed from overdone fake grumpiness to full blown anger.

“You gotta be kidding me!” he declared, turning straight back around to head on up the stairs again.

Luke caught him by the arm and pulled him back.

“Jess, come on,” he urged his nephew, speaking quietly to him then. “Look, I know what she did, what she said to you before, but she is your mother and she is sorry,” he explained. “C’mon, you’re not that angry teenager anymore. You’ve grown up so much. Come back and prove it,” he urged him.

Jess exhaled slowly and tried his hardest to be calm. He thought of Rory and Jack, all that they meant to him, and tried to tell himself that Liz loved him just as much as he loved his family. Unfortunately, he had a hard time convincing himself of that, even a little bit. He looked down at Luke’s hand on his arm, let his head drop in defeat.

“I’ll talk to her,” he nodded slowly then as he turned around to face his uncle. “But I’m doing it for you,” he said definitely, pointing a finger at Luke. “For your sake, not hers, okay?”

“Thank you,” Luke smiled genuinely. “I appreciate that.”

Jess trudged back down the two steps he had made it up and came back to the counter to face his mother.

“Hey, baby,” she grinned at him. “How’re you doin’?”

“You wanna talk, we go upstairs,” said Jess flatly, eyes tracking around the diner and picking out at least six different people who were currently talking about him behind their hands. “I’m not like you, I don’t particularly like making a fool of myself in public.”

With that he turned back towards the stairs and expected Liz to follow. Huffing out a sigh, she did just that. Luke patted his sister on the shoulder as she went by. They were both such big personalities, Liz and Jess. Sure she hadn’t been the world’s greatest mother, far from it, but she wanted to try and that was important. Jess hadn’t been the easiest kid either, but he had grown up into a good man and a great father. Luke had faith that these two could work it out if they only tried. Now he just had to hope they would try.

Upstairs, Jess burst into the apartment, almost letting the door swing back into Liz’s face. She said nothing about it, just followed him in and closed the door behind her. He was stood in the centre of the space in the middle of the room, back to her still. Liz took a breath and began.

“Jess, honey, I am... I’m so sorry for what happened with us the last time I was here, but baby, you gotta understand...”

“I gotta understand what, Liz?” he asked, rounding on her then. “You think I didn’t know that I’d screwed up Rory’s life when I got her pregnant? You didn’t think I was feeling bad enough about that every single day?” he said, pointing a finger at her on every one of those last three words for emphasis. “I know what a screw up I was, but what exactly did either of us expect me to be? The product of a loser father and a flake of a mother, how was I ever supposed to turn out normal? How was I ever supposed to be a decent parent?”

Liz winced at the yelling, but she took it all, knowing she had to. She bit her lip and shook her head when Jess was finally done.

“I know I didn’t always do the best thing for you, Jess, and your father sure didn’t,” she laughed humourlessly, leaving Jimmy out of it the moment she saw her son’s reaction to the mention. “I should’ve tried harder, I guess, but what can I say, sweetheart? I was young. So young, and alone.”

“So was Lorelai,” he countered. “You wouldn’t know because you never met Rory, but she is a hundred times the person I am. Her mother was sixteen and alone when she got pregnant, so you? You have no excuses!”

“You’re right, I don’t,” she agreed, volume rising in her voice as she took more and more of his bile. “But you know what, Jess? Nobody is perfect. I wasn’t a perfect mother, and I’m sorry if that’s what you wanted, but I did the best I could with what I had. Maybe I shouldn’t ever have been a mother, okay? But that’s in the past now, and I can’t do anything to change it.”

Jess knew that was true. Calling his mother out on all her flaws never did any good before and it wasn’t going to help now either. She was right, they couldn’t go back and fix the past, they could only make sure the future was better. As far as Jess was concerned, the best way to make the future bright for himself, Rory, and Jack was to keep Liz well out of their lives. Now it seemed like that wasn’t going to be an option.

“I was a pretty crappy mom, Jess, I know that,” Liz signed, coming cautiously forward. “But I wanna make it up to you. I wanna be some kind of mother to you now, and I really wanna be a good grandma to your son.”

It was hard not to bristle at the request, at Liz’s hand on his arm as she looked up at him with such hope in her eyes. He didn’t want this. He didn’t need a mother anymore, and Jack had enough family to last him a lifetime without Grandma Liz breezing in and out of his life, ruining everything. On the other hand, Jess had said he would try, for Luke’s sake, if nothing else. Jack was young yet, barely six months old. Liz couldn’t do much harm by meeting him, not with Jess and Rory both present. Besides, if she left and never came back, Jack would never even remember knowing her, wouldn’t have to suffer the rejection Jess had gone through too many times.

“Okay,” he said then, nodding once. “You can meet Jack, and Rory,” he acquiesced. “But I swear to God, Liz, you say anything I don’t like, you screw up just once and...”

“Thank you, son!” she interrupted, throwing her arms around him in a tight hug.

Jess patted her back with one hand and then did his best to get away. He led Liz out of the apartment and back down to the diner, explaining to Luke where they were headed. His uncle shot him a grateful smile, but Jess couldn’t bear to reciprocate. He just wanted today over with as fast as possible.

* * *

Rory smiled when she heard a key in the door.

“Hey, that’s Daddy!” she told baby Jack, gesturing for him to look over at the door. “Say, ‘Hi, Daddy!’” she grinned, picking up the baby’s hand and making him wave.

The smile slipped from her face a little when she realised her fiancé was not alone.

“Oh, hi,” she greeted the stranger that followed Jess into the apartment.

Rory picked up Jack and stood to greet the guest, wondering at how awkward her fiancé looked about it all. It was then the puzzle pieces clicked together in her brain, just a few seconds before Jess made introductions.

“Rory Gilmore, this is Liz, my mother,” he said, barely looking at either of them. “Liz, Rory, and our son, Jack.”

“Wow. Er, okay. Hi, Liz,” said Rory awkwardly. “It’s good to meet you at last, I guess.”

It didn’t sound very flattering and she knew it, but Rory couldn’t help it. Last time Liz was in Stars Hollow, she had all but destroyed Jess’ confidence in himself and the future. In the long run, that confrontation might actually have made Jess stronger, but Rory couldn’t care about that right now. All she knew was this woman who was looking at her son like she wanted to make a grab at him was the very same one that had ruined large chunks of Jess’ life. That made Rory protective of both her men and instinctively she took a step back from Liz.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Rory,” she grinned. “And you too, baby boy,” she told Jack who quickly buried his face in his mother’s shoulder and tried to hide away. “The woman that tamed my son, huh?”

“That’s not really true,” said Rory, shaking her head. “Jess didn’t need taming, not really, and even if he did, I wouldn’t want to change him. He doesn’t need to change.”

“Rory,” said Jess in a sort of a warning tone, shaking his head as she looked at him.

“What?” she asked, knowing as soon as she met his eyes what he meant.

There didn’t need to be a fight here, especially not in front of Jack. Liz was clearly making some kind of effort and Jess was too. It might be undeserved but he was doing his best and he needed Rory to do the same. It didn’t come easy to her, not at all.

“Now you’re back, I think I’ll take a shower,” she said stiffly, trying to prise Jack away from her body and hand him to Jess. “C’mon, baby. Go to Daddy,” she urged him.

Jack allowed himself to be handed over, but the moment Liz reached out to him, he flung himself into Jess’s chest and hid his face again.

Jess held his son close, kissed the top of his head and rubbed his back, promising him everything was okay. Rory muttered a goodbye to Liz and walked out of the room.

“Wow, she really loves you a lot,” said Liz the moment Rory was gone. “She wouldn’t hate me so much on instinct alone if she didn’t.”

“Rory doesn’t really hate anybody,” said Jess, swaying back and forth with Jack in his arms as the baby fussed. “Can’t help it if I told her what happened with us last Thanksgiving. And before,” he said, looking down. “You probably don’t come off so well in those stories.”

“Probably not,” Liz agreed, trying again to get Jack’s attention, but he refused to look at her, and instead started to cry.

“It’s not you, not specifically,” said Jess as kindly as he could. “He’s not big on strangers.”

Somehow that seemed to hurt Liz more than he intended. Jess couldn’t help it. Despite the fact she was Jack’s grandmother, Liz was a stranger to the kid. He knew Luke and Lorelai, Richard and Emily, Lane and Zach, Mrs R, The Belvilles, Paris and Doyle, but he didn’t know either of Jess’ parents, not at all. You couldn’t blame a six month old for shying away from someone he didn’t recognise, especially given the weird vibes he must’ve been getting both from Rory and Jess.

“It was a mistake me coming here,” said Liz then, smiling in spite of the sad truth she was admitting to and the tears in her eyes. “I shouldn’t’ve tried, I... I’m gonna go.”

She turned to the door, and something in Jess’ heart clenched. He didn’t know why he should feel bad for Liz, he probably shouldn’t at all, but it was hard to see her upset, it always had been, no matter what she’d done to hurt him in the past.

“I’m sorry,” he called behind her. “That Jack’s not comfortable, that Rory was... That she wasn’t exactly welcoming.”

“They have their reasons,” she shrugged, knowing it was true. “I can’t expect to come back here and just slip into a family that I didn’t make. Jess, you... you’ve made a life for yourself. You settled down. It was something I could never quite manage to do,” she sniffled. “Me and T.J., I think it could really last, so maybe I’ll be as lucky as you are right now, but you got it right the first time. I’m proud of you, baby, and believe it or not, I love you so much,” she swore to him. “Bye, Jess.”

She left then, the door thudding shut behind her. Jess closed his eyes a moment and let the mixed up feelings in his chest all settle to a dull roar.

Jack wriggled and kicked his legs, threw a pudgy hand up into Jess’ face, grabbing at his nose. Jess laughed and playfully attempted to bite his son’s fingers as the baby laughed. So much for the past, for the family he never quite had before. He had one now and he couldn’t love them more. That was the important thing, and yet there was still a pain in his heart right now, and he just couldn’t shake it.


	9. Into the Valley - 2nd September 2019

“Grandma, I know you’re trying to be nice, but Jack is a little busy right now getting his stuff together for school. It’s his first day...” explained Rory but got no further with what she was trying to say as Emily interrupted - again!

Jess came to stand by his wife, rolling his eyes at what he knew was her grandmother going on and on once again about Jack’s schooling. She had been less than happy with their kids going to a regular grade school, but now Jack was about to start high school she was going a little crazy about it. She really, really wanted to see her great grandson go to Chilton the same as Rory, but it was not going to happen. Not because Jess vetoed it or because they couldn’t afford it. This decision had been entirely Jack’s own to make. He chose Stars Hollow High and so that was where he was going, as Rory repeated to Emily now, for all the good it did.

“I’m aware of where Jack is going and why, Rory,” her grandmother told her snippily. “I simply want to be given the chance to wish him luck, that’s all. Is it so much to ask? I am is great-grandmother after all.”

Jess started playing the world’s tiniest violin and Rory rolled her eyes, covering the mouthpiece of the phone to yell to her son.

“Jack? Phone for you!” she told him loudly. “It’s Gran,” she told him with a false smile.

“Hey, Gran,” he greeted her with a smile. “Is everything okay?”

Rory followed Jess to the kitchen, bemoaning her grandmother’s pushy ways.

“I guess it was too much to hope she would ever grow out of trying to control everything,” she sighed, pushing her hair back with both hands. “Did she learn nothing from my first pregnancy? Her objections to you? It got her precisely nowhere.”

“Hey, she was nice to me for at least six months after Jack was born,” said Jess with a smirk. “That’s got to be some kind of miracle for Emily. After all, I was never worthy,” he said, taking Rory into his arms.

“I think you’re very worthy” she reminded him with a kiss. “Can you believe our baby is starting high school? The same high school that we went to?”

“The same high school that I dropped out of,” Jess considered. “The same high school that Luke went to,” he recalled then.

“Wow. Third generation of Danes-type guys going to Stars Hollow High. Crazy.”

“It is that.”

“Seriously, Gran, I want to go to this school!” said Jack loud enough to be heard from the hallway. “It’s not about the money. Yes, I know, I’m smart enough, but all my friends are going to Stars Hollow, and it’s where I want to be.”

“One day he’ll learn that fighting Emily Gilmore is futile,” said Jess with a sigh. “You just gotta accept that she’s never going to be happy about what you’re doing and move on.”

“Amen,” Rory agreed. “Although, could you maybe not sound so much like my mom. That’s freaky.”

Jess made a face at that and then couldn’t help but laugh at Rory's own freaked out expression. He kissed her then, pleasing his wife exceedingly, though their daughter was nothing like impressed.

“Oh, geez!” she declared, turning around and walking out of the room even faster than she’d barrelled in.

Rory laughed too hard at the remark.

“More and more like Daddy every day,” she giggled, as Jack appeared in the doorway.

“You all set, buddy?” asked Jess, relinquishing his hold on Rory then.

“Pretty sure,” he said, double-checking he had his lunch money and his cell phone, then checking his hair in the nearest reflective surface.

“Two of them that are just like Daddy,” Rory muttered with a smile on her face but her son didn’t even notice. “Okay then, have a good first day, hon,” she told him, moving forward to adjust the collar of his shirt.

“Thanks, Mom,” he smiled, even as he squirmed away from her fussing.

“Remember what I said, you don’t start any fights,” said Jess definitely. “But if somebody else starts one with you, you make sure you finish it.”

“Jess!” Rory complained, swatting her husband across the arm.

“What?” he asked wih a smirk that still got to her every time, taking all her sensible words and good arguments away.

Jack just shook his head and left for school. First day of high school, it was kind of a big deal, even if he was going to play it like it wasn’t. How uncool would it be to seem nervous? That wouldn’t work at all.

* * *

Jack felt as prepared as he could be for this day. High school was supposed to be the best time in a person’s life, or so everybody else kept telling him. All except his dad, that was. Jack knew some of what happened when Jess Mariano was a teen and not all of it was good. All his dad did tell him outright was that Jack was his own person and that high school could be whatever he wanted to make it.

Aunt Lane had provided what she liked to call her ‘Surviving High School Mix’ and Jack had loaded the playlist to his MP3 without flinching. Nobody knew music like Lane, and her taste was trusted implicitly. A smile came to Jack’s lips as a mixture of The Ramones, Blink 182, and The Hives blared through his earbuds, amongst some other artists he never heard before but instantly loved. If all else failed, he had his soundtrack for the first few weeks of this place, Jack thought, as he looked up at the building before him.

Stars Hollow High School. This place had seen not only his mother and father pass through its doors, but also Aunt Lane, and even Grandpa Luke. That made Jack kind of a legacy.

“No pressure then,” he muttered to himself as he headed inside.

At his previous school he was the big fish in a small pond. The eldest of a whole trail of kids, including his younger sister, the Kim twins, and his own uncle. Jack suddenly felt very alone here, despite the fact he knew the friends from his own grade were around here someplace, not least Martha who he had grown up with from the beginning. Things were never weird with her, despite the whole opposing gender thing. Jack never thought to look at Martha as anything but one of his very best friends. Unfortunately, he couldn’t see her around right now. Thankfully, on looking down the hall, Jack spotted his other best friend and immediately he smiled.

“Hey, Alex!” he called, waving a hand.

“Mariano, you made it!” his friend grinned as they met with a high five. “So, this is high school, huh?”

“Apparently,” Jack agreed, pulling his headphones from his ears. “For all the music I’ve been blasting, the only thing in my head right now is BNL’s Grade 9.”

“Man, the only thing in my head is women,” said Alex with a leer at the nearest females walking by, in pants so tight they left nothing to the imagination.

“Does everything have to start and end with girls for you?” asked Jack amusedly, but his friend shook his head.

“Not girls, Jack. Women!” he emphasised. “This is high school, man, and you know what that means.”

“Tougher classes and a bigger library?” he quipped, knowing very well that was not what his buddy was getting at.

“Parties, dates, and opportunities with older women!” Alex insisted. “We’ve finally entered the world that my older brother has been enjoying for three years already, and that I am literally desperate to dive into.”

Jack laughed at that, covering his discomfort. He really wasn’t the overt confident guy that his friend was, not at all. Sure, he could hold his own in an intellectual conversation, and girls liked him well enough, but he hadn’t the nerve to be asking out older women or whatever. Jack’s thoughts on high school were to learn as much as possible, not drown in homework, and come out of the place in four years time with diploma in hand. It was all he wanted, all he had planned. Apparently, if he was hanging out with Alex, and that was a given, there would be plenty of extra curricular activities involved that he hadn’t really given all that much thought to yet.

“You do realise you’re required to learn things here too, right?” he checked with Alex. “Like the whole point of school? The studying thing?”

“Sure, yeah, I can do that too,” said his friend with a shrug, even as his eyes scanned the crowd. “Woah, you think I could get extra biology credit for studying her?” he asked then, gesturing towards a stunning figure at the end of the hall, complete with blonde hair and legs that went on forever.

“Geez, Alex,” Jack rolled his eyes.

“I second that,” said a new voice, both boys looking up at the same moment to see Martha had appeared before them. “You do know how far out of your league she is, right?”

“Seriously?” Alex asked, one eyebrow raised. “You have no idea how irresistable I can be.”

“I’ll take your word on it,” said Martha, rolling her eyes, before turning to Jack with a smile. “You ready for this?”

“High school? Sure,” he told her, nodding easily. “Pretty sure I’ve already read any book English class is going to throw at me thanks to the parentals, and Aunt Paris has been drilling me on math and science for months now.”

“How are you always so cool and calm about everything ever?” she asked nervously, reaching into her pocket for an apple and crunching down hard on it.

She always ate when she was nervous, but thankfully mostly healthy food. The Belville house was constantly full of fresh produce thanks to Jackson. Of course, that didn’t mean Martha didn’t have a sweet tooth at times. Her figure wasn’t that of a model, that was for sure, but she was tall and pretty enough that nobody had ever really made her weight an issue. Jack barely noticed her looks anyway, coming up together as they had, almost as close as siblings. Of course, for all her protestations and the way they fought at times, Jack knew if Martha was interested in anyone noticing her it would be Alex. Unfortunately, Jack’s best guy friend was completely oblivious as ever.

“Don’t sweat it, Belville,” Alex told Martha on hearing her worries. “The teachers are gonna love you by association, given the star your brother is in this place.”

“That’s probably true,” Jack considered, recalling how loved Davey was for his skills on the football field as much as anything. “But either way, you’re not here alone, Martha. We got your back,” he promised.

She smiled at that, as the bell rang loudly over head. As the three joined their fellow Freshmen in heading to orientation, Alex continued to wax lyrical about all the women he planned to date now he was in high school, and Martha pretended to find it all kind of patehtic whilst silently seething with jealousy. Jack wasn’t altogether paying attenion as he walked down the halls, his eyes scanning the wall displays and trophy cabinets. He was so distracted he ran right into a teacher coming the other way.

“Sorry, sir,” he said quickly, jumping out of the way.

The teacher’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Jack, wondering if he recognised him, or so Jack surmised. Whether he was seeing his mom or his dad, Jack couldn’t be sure, and since the teacher never asked, he didn’t feel like getting into it. They walked away from each other, the moment had passed. Jack would worry later if he got a rep from being a Mariano or a Gilmore or whatever. Right now he was concentrating on finding out where his classes were and navigating the halls. Everything else would figure itself out later.


	10. Baby, One More Time - 15th November 2007

Rory woke up slowly, her eyelids fluttering as she finally came back to the land of the living. When she tried to move a little she remembered why that was a bad idea, pain burning through places she would rather not mention, and the bed too hard to be her own. She was in the hospital, she remembered now, but thankfully, she was not alone.

“Hey,” she said softly, swallowing hard.

“Hey,” Jess replied, reaching a gentle hand to her face. “How’re you feeling?”

Rory let out a breath and nodded.

“I’m okay,” she promised. “Sore, tired... I’ll live.”

“Good to know,” her husband smiled at the choice of words, mostly to cover the fact he wanted to cry - again.

Jess Mariano wasn’t much for breaking down, especially in public, but when both Rory and their unborn child’s lives were hanging in the balance, he had shed more than a few tears. The worst was over now, the baby had been born naturally, though she had been through some serious distress and an emergency Caesarean seemed like the only way for a while. In the end, Rory found inner strength that impressed even Jess, not to mention Lorelai, pushing a little girl out into the world to complete the family.

“You scared the hell out of me, Gilmore,” he told her, a habit that he never had quit, even after his Rory became Mrs Mariano.

“Scared the hell out of me too,” she admitted shakily. “She’s not alone, is she?”

“No, Grandma Lorelai is with her,” Jess promised, kissing Rory’s hand that he now held tight in both of his own. “Jack is in the waiting area with Luke. They had Mrs R take Billy for the night. This is no place for a screaming seven month old.”

Rory nodded her agreement to all he said, though honestly it was hard to have any kind of coherent thought right now. There were plenty of times in her life when Rory had been scared. A lot of her top ten revolved around Jack for the longest time. She was afraid when she first realised she was pregnant, again when she had to tell her mother the truth of the situation, and definitely when she was in labour that first time. Today had lain waste to all of that. Nothing was as scary as being told you might lose your baby and maybe your own life too.

“You want to hear the weirdest part?” she asked, a crack in her voice that she had no control over at all. “I wasn’t scared for me,” she shook her head, tears leaking from her eyes unnoticed. “All I kept thinking was how unfair it was that she might never even get to be born or see what the world looked like, that she’d never meet her Daddy or her brother. I was afraid of how you and Jack would get along without me too.”

Jess wanted to tell her it was okay. Wanted to express the fact that he had been similarly afraid of life without her in it. One day, way in the future, that was something he might have to face, but Jess expected to be a good age before either he or Rory had to face the world without the other at their side. Not now, not when they were so young and had little kids to raise. The idea of losing his unborn daughter would’ve broken his heart in two. Losing Rory, that might actually have killed him out-right. All of this was in his head, but nothing left his lips but a garbled version of her name as he leaned down to kiss her face.

It had been close. Way too close actually. It was practically a miracle that both Rory and the baby were here in the world, that they were both going to be okay. Jess wasn’t exactly the religious type, but he had never prayed so hard as he had in the hospital today.

“You’re here. Both of you are here, and you’re not goin’ anywhere,” he said then, finally finding his voice. “I don’t know how to do this life thing without you, Rory,” he told her, stroking a hand over her hair.

“Why do you think I fought so hard to stay?” she smiled a watery smile even as two more big fat tears slid down her cheeks.

Jess kissed her lips then, promising her that he had never loved her more, that he was going to take the very best care of her and their family. Rory never doubted it, but it was good to hear again anyway. This was the worst day they had experienced yet, and one of the best at the same time because miraculously everybody pulled through. Rory thanked God for that.

* * *

“Hey,” said Luke as he approached his wife.

Lorelai turned from the window with tears in her eyes that she couldn’t help right now. She smiled when she saw Luke with Jack on his hip, hiding the fact she was wiping away a stray droplet by pushing her hair back behind her ear in the same motion.

“Hi,” she greeted both her husband and grandson. “I know it’s crazy, because she’s going to be just fine, but I feel like if I’m not stood right here with her...”

“It’s okay,” said Luke, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her close, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “I understand, and I’ll bet Rory will be glad to know somebody is keeping an eye on her baby.”

“My baby?” asked Jack, peering through the glass at a row of incubators, each with a little bundle laid inside.

“Yes, honey,” said Lorelai with a smile, putting her finger on the glass to point. “This little one right here? That’s your baby sister.”

“Baby sister,” he intoned dutifully, leaning further to see and making it tricky for Luke to keep a hold on him.

Jack had both hands against the glass now, staring down at the little girl that was apparently called ‘sister’. He didn’t entirely understand what had happened here, and at thirty two months, it wasn’t really surprising. Nobody told him anything about the problems that occurred with the birth, only that Momma wasn’t feeling well but would be better soon, and that he had a sister now.

“They settle on a name yet?” Luke asked Lorelai who smiled proudly as she gestured to the tag on the cot that her husband had clearly missed.

“Lucas Danes, meet Victoria Lorelai Mariano.”

“That is beautiful,” he smiled, noting the reversal of his wife’s own names.

It was the perfect choice, a tribute to the family line and an even larger tribute to Rory’s mother and best friend. Victoria was so tiny and yet she didn’t seem frail at all. With the DNA she possessed, she was pretty much guaranteed to be strong, a fighter like all the Gilmores and Danes that came before her.

“What do you think to your sister, Jacky M?” asked Lorelai then reaching to take her grandson from Luke who handed him over immediately. “That’s Victoria, your baby sister, and you’re going to have to take very good care of her now. You’re a big brother and that’s a whole lot of responsibility.”

“Baby sister,” he repeated with a definite nod, making Lorelai smile.

“That’s right, sweetie,” she agreed. “Victoria. Can you say Victoria?”

“Toria,” said Jack. “Baby sister. Toria!” he yelled then as if calling to her as he turned once again to the glass.

“Close enough,” said Lorelai to Luke who rolled his eyes. “I think these two will get along just fine.”

“It’s nice for kids to have siblings if they can,” he agreed. “Not that an only child can’t turn out just fine too,” he smiled, wiping the remaining tears from Lorelai’s cheek. “You want me to stay here a while so you can go see Rory?”

“Maybe in a little bit,” she nodded her agreement. “Let her and Jess have some time. I never saw a person look more terrified than he did today.”

“You should’ve looked in a mirror,” Luke advised. “I never felt so useless in my entire life. All the people I loved most in the world were hurting and there was nothing I could do.”

It was just about as close as Lorelai had ever seen Luke come to crying. Sure, there had been happy tears in the past, when Billy was born most especially, but never this kind of pain. Rory was as much Luke’s daughter as anybody’s, though blood and DNA would prove otherwise. He had come close to losing her today, just the same as the rest of them, and it tore him apart not to be able to be Mr Fix It like he so often had been before.

Lorelai moved to hug him, careful not to squash Jack in the middle of their embrace. Luke pressed a kiss to her lips when they parted a minute later. Everything was going to be fine, Luke knew, but he had to keep telling himself that. It was a mantra he and this family of theirs was going to have to keep repeating for a while until it really sunk in. As close as they had come to losing so much today, in the end they had only gained. One more person in the ever expanding family, a beautiful little girl that would no doubt be another slightly different mix of Rory and Jess, perfect in her own way, as Jack already was. In the end, it had all turned out okay.

“Sad, Grandpa?” asked Jack from Lorelai’s hip, tilting his little head just so - sometimes he reminded Luke so much of Jess when he was a toddler.

“No, buddy. Not sad,” he promised him, ruffling his hair. “It's been a big day, but everything is going to be okay now, I promise.”


	11. Once Upon A Time - 23rd August 2011

It was tough to make excuses to the two most adorable kids on the planet when they were begging you for just one more bedtime story. This Jess was finding out on a warm Summer night, where light still streamed into the bedroom even through the tightly shut curtains, and there was no school for Jack in the morning. At six and a half, the little boy could get into full-on Gilmore ramble whenever he was really into something. At not quite three, his sister could give out the big-blue-eyes as well as her mother and then some. Between the two of them, they could have Jess powerless in under five minutes, something he swore only Rory would ever be capable of until he became a father. Though the hour was late, and both kids should have been in bed sleeping at least an hour ago instead of squeezed in either side of their father on Jack’s new full-size bed, Jess relented and promised one more story.

“But this really is the last one for tonight!” he said sternly, but clearly not sternly enough because there was way too much clapping-based joy and general hilarity. “So, what’ll it be? Cinderella? Jack and the Beanstalk?”

“Daddy story!” his daughter insisted, throwing herself into his side. “Daddy tell story!”

“Yeah! The best stories are your stories, Daddy!” Jack agreed, bouncing around on his knees on the mattress.

“Really?” asked Jess, rubbing a hand across his forehead as he tried to think of something clever.

Making up stories for the kids came pretty naturally to him most of the time. He just mixed up elements from all the children’s fairy tales and such he remembered from his own past, throwing in parts from movies that were kid-friendly, or could be made to sound as if they were. He had a few original ideas of his own, but the time of day when his kids wanted to hear tales he conjured from nothing was usually sufficiently late that he was too tired to be very smart.

“Okay then,” he said at last, letting out a long breath. “Everybody get comfy and put on your listening ears,” he said, flinging an arm around Jack and settling him down against his side again as Victoria curled up comfortably with her little head on Daddy’s shoulder. “Once upon a time there was a prince, and the prince lived in a dark and lonely tower. It was hard on him, being all alone and feeling so trapped in that tower, which was very dark and full of scary things. The prince blamed everybody around him for locking him the tower, for making him live in the dark and all. He was an angry, unhappy prince.”

“Poor prince,” said Victoria sadly, and Jess kissed the top of her head before continuing.

“Well, soon the prince met a girl. She was the most beautiful princess he had ever seen in his whole life, and she lived in a kingdom full of people who adored her. She was happy and free, full of sunshine and love, but she always knew something was missing in her life.”

“Was she missing a prince?” asked Jack excitedly.

“Keep listening, you’ll find out,” his father advised, tickling his ribs. “Now, the princess was promised to the white knight, and everybody thought they would get married and live happily ever after, but once the princess met the unhappy prince, that’s when things changed. She came to visit him in his dark and lonely tower, and every time the prince spoke to the princess, he realised that the black tower he was forced to live in crumbled a little bit at a time.”

“Did she have magic?” asked Jack curiously.

“She did,” nodded Jess. “See, the princess had a special power that meant she could break through the walls of the tower just with her smile and her love for the prince. It was only then, when the walls started to fall down, that the prince realised he had built that tower himself. He suddenly knew that he could leave the darkness any time he wanted to, he just needed a reason to want to be free.”

“The princess!” said Victoria happily.

“That’s right. The princess was the prince’s reason to fight the darkness. Because of her, the prince knocked down all the walls around him, fought the dragons and the monsters that hid in the dark and tried to hurt him, and the princess helped with that too. Never underestimate a princess that brings her own sword to the party,” he advised Jack, who giggled at the imagery.

“Anyway, after the prince defeated all the darkness that surrounded him, he also defeated the white knight, and then he won the princess’ heart forever.”

“And live happy after,” said Victoria, completing the tale as best she could.

“Yeah, sweetheart. They lived very happily ever after,” he promised. “They got married, and they had a little prince and princess of their own,” he said, kissing her forehead and then Jack’s as well. “And you know what the little prince and princess just loved to do?”

“What?” asked his son curiously.

“They loved... to go to bed when their father told them to!” said Jess loudly, getting up off the bed with one child under each arm.

They laughed and pretended to struggle as Daddy ‘flew’ them around the room, before dumping Jack unceremoniously in his bed. Jess shifted Victoria in his arms, leaning down so she and her brother could say goodnight to each other, complete with hug, and then turned to leave.

“Now, sleep,” he told Jack. “No more messing around.”

“'Night, Daddy!” the little boy called as Jess took Victoria to her room next door.

He laid her down in her smaller bed, pulled up the sheets and gave her a kiss.

“Sleep time, baby girl,” he reminded her when she looked set to make further protests.

“Okay,” she relented then, with a mournful sigh her grandmother would have been proud of. “'Night, Daddy,” she smiled.

“Night, Tor.”

Jess stood up and walked towards the door, taking once last look at his daughter before closing her door. He then checked Jack was still in his bed and at least looked like he might be trying to sleep before closing his door too. He headed downstairs to the living room and found Rory on the couch, seemingly hiding her face behind her hand as she watched TV. One glance at the crappy reality show on the screen proved to Jess that his wife was not actually watching at all.

“Rory?” he checked.

Her hand came away from her face and though she forced a smile, tears poured from her eyes the moment she tried to speak and tell him she was fine. Jess joined her on the couch and pulled her easily into his arms for a hug.

“I’m sorry,” she hiccupped. “I’m fine, I swear. I was just... I was on my way back from the bathroom and I heard you telling the kids that story.”

Jess pulled back to look at her, smiling a little as he wiped away tears from her pink-tinged cheeks. Even after all this time, she blushed when she made a fool of herself, even in front of him.

“I couldn’t think of anything else so they got the story of us, fairy tale edition,” he smirked.

“So I heard,” Rory nodded. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me, it’s just, you told it so beautifully and... painfully, I guess?” she admitted. “The prince in the dark tower,” she smiled slightly through her tears, a hand at his cheek. “You can break my heart with that now as much as when you were living it.”

“Rory,” he shook his head slightly, leaning into her touch. “It wasn’t that bad, or maybe it was for a while,” he reconsidered. “But did you not hear the part where a lot of it was my own fault? Were you not listening in when I mentioned that you helped, a lot, with all of that?”

“I was listening,” she nodded, sniffing still. “And I know you told me before what a difference I made to your life. I guess I just don’t think about it much. When I think about us, I smile knowing how much you changed my life,” she explained, a hand on her heart. “I forget it works the other way around too.”

“Well, that’s the part where you’re not as smart as we thought,” he told her with a smirk and a soft kiss on her lips. “C’mon, Ror. After all this time, you know what you mean to me. You know everything there is to know about me, good and bad, and you’re still here. If that doesn’t make you special, or possibly crazy, I don’t know what does.”

“Sweet man,” she smiled widely, leaning against him, revelling in the feeling of his arms around her even after all this time.

They ended up kissing a while, and then going to bed insanely early. Though both were tired, neither was thinking of sleep by the time they reached the bedroom.

A while later, Rory was curled up in Jess’ arms, her head pillowed on his chest when she broke their usual comfortable silence.

“Y’know, you could do that for a living.”

Jess looked down at her strangely, though she didn’t notice with her eyes closed.

“Seriously? Because I’m pretty sure that’s still illegal in most states.”

Rory looked up at him then and realised he hadn’t been aware of the train of thought that had occurred in her brain before she spoke. 

“No, not that,” she giggled, swatting him in the chest. “I meant storytelling, or writing stories, I guess,” she elaborated. “You tell such great bedtime stories to the kids, and with all the books you’ve read, the life you’ve lived...”

“The life I’ve lived?” he echoed with a smirk. “Not that I don’t love how my life has turned out, Ror, but I don't really think seventeen years of downtown NYC living, and a few more in the insane asylum that is the Hollow is quite the life experience required to write the great American novel.”

“Says who?” asked Rory seriously. “You don’t have to travel the world to know about people, about love, about pain. Some of the best books in the world were written by authors who lived lives that were nothing like the worlds they created.”

Jess was about to tell her she was cracked in that good-natured way he sometimes did, but then he reconsidered. A writer. Of all the professions in the world, he supposed that wouldn’t be a bad one. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t think of at least six ideas for stories off the top of his head most of the time, and though his attendance in English class at school was spotty at best, his knowledge and writing style were far from lacking.

“Something to think about,” he considered. “I mean, I have a live-in editor and muse right here,” he told her, planting sloppy kisses on her cheek and neck until Rory giggled like the teenager she used to be. 

“Yes, you do,” she promised him, moving her head up onto the pillow beside him. “Imagine being a world famous author.”

“I’d settle for eight hours sleep a night,” he told her tiredly. “But like I said, definitely something to think about.”

“I think so,” Rory agreed, kissing his lips.

They settled down to sleep then, their arms around each other. One thing was for sure, no matter what once upon a time tales Jess ever came up with, he knew he had already found his happily ever after right here. He still wasn’t sure how the prince in the dark tower had come to deserve such an ending, but he wouldn’t trade it for the whole world.


	12. The Gilmore Heir - 6th August 2005

“Tell me again why we’re doing this?” asked Jess, adjusting the tie that felt as if it was choking him.

Rory rolled her eyes, passing him the car seat that held their son as she fixed the mess her fiancé just made of his collar. She knew he wasn't looking forward to this day, largely because it involved a lot of being amongst people, with one of the major players being Emily Gilmore. Rory wasn’t exactly thrilled about having to try to keep the peace all day either, but the event itself ought to be a nice affair, overdone but nice.

In the same way that Rory had chosen to go ahead and attend a coming out ball when she was sixteen for the sake of her grandparents wishes, so too she and Jess had agreed to the fancy christening that Emily and Richard felt very much necessary for their first and only great grandchild. It wasn’t very much to ask, and they had been as supportive as they could be this past year. Sure, when Rory first returned from NYC with a baby bump and an ex in tow, Emily had not reacted at all well, but things were better now, most of the time.

“I mean, your grandpa I can handle. Richard actually likes me, and despite being two generations apart, we can find things to talk about.” Jess explained. “But Emily is just... Well, let’s be honest, she flat out hates me. Nobody could possibly disappoint her more than the trash that knocked up her precious granddaughter.”

“Oh, no!” exclaimed Lorelai from behind them, making both Rory and Jess jump since they hadn’t known she was there. “No way, mister. You do not get to come cruising in here all dark and moody and steal my hard-earned title!” she said definitely, even as Luke rolled his eyes. “I am Emily Gilmore’s biggest disappointment, and don’t you forget it,” she said, hand dramatically placed over her heart.

Jess smirked at her performance.

“Pardon me for forgetting,” he apologised. “I think I rank a pretty close second though.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” she smiled at him then. “When I got pregnant at sixteen, it was all my fault. Christopher was practically an angel in comparison, despite the part he played. Then when it’s our Rory who does the deed and makes the out-of-wedlock baby, the guy is to blame,” she sighed, peering down at her adorable grandson as she spoke of him. “God knows where the blame lands if this whole cycle goes around a third time with you, kid,” she said to the sleepy baby.

Rory’s eyes widened just a little.

“Mom, he’s five months old,” she reminded her. “I really don’t think we have to worry about teen pregnancy issues right now.”

“Agreed,” said Luke with a nod. “Probably best to concentrate on getting through this day first. It’s going to be enough to deal with, without contemplating any future Emily Gilmore explosions.”

Jess let out a heavy sigh, knowing his uncle was right. He really was not looking forward to any of this. It was the middle of August, a sweltering hot day, and he was trapped in a suit, forced to spend time with Emily and a bunch of other Gilmores that would no doubt dote on Rory and Jack whilst looking down their collective noses at Jess himself.

They still didn’t come to Friday Night Dinner every week, but had attended around once a month since Jack was born. It seemed to work for everybody, and Jess found he could just about grin and bear it through this minimal number of meals. After all, with Jack and Rory getting almost all of the attention, Jess was left alone to eat and not be bothered by the Gilmore elders too much.

When they suggested the christening however, all eyes fell upon Jess. He had to assume they were expecting a fight. It was worth agreeing with the idea just to see the shock on Emily’s face, which was pretty comical. Honestly, Jess didn’t mind his son being christened. After all, though he wouldn’t call himself denominational at all, he did believe there was a God. Even Rory had looked surprised when he said so, but he wasn’t sure why. If anything proved the existence of a higher being, it was the way Jess had been saved from a life of ultimate destruction. Luke and Rory had been his salvation in so many ways and that just couldn’t be a coincidence. Though he had no idea how or why he came to deserve it, somebody had to be watching out for Jess, at least that's what he thought at this point in his life.

Shaking himself from too much deep thought, Jess realised Lorelai was now ringing the doorbell and a maid swiftly came to let them in. Emily and Richard were two steps behind the help, quick to welcome everybody in before Emily went into full panic mode over things Jess cared nothing about - catering mishaps, the wrong flowers in the church, stuff that just didn’t matter at all as far as he could tell, at least not unless you were Emily Gilmore.

“Seriously, Mom. Jack is not even five months old yet. He doesn’t care if everything isn’t full on perfect,” Lorelai told her. “Hell, I’ll be happy if we get through the ceremony without him peeing or puking.”

“Amen,” agreed Rory as they went through to the living room.

“Lorelai, don’t say hell!” Emily admonished her loudly. “And Amen is to be reserved for prayers, young lady,” she reminded Rory.

“We’re not in church yet, Mom”, her daughter pointed out, but Emily wasn’t listening anyway.

Jack had woken up and his great-grandparents were quick to tell him what a special day this was, how important and everything. Strangely, they mentioned nothing of his being welcomed into the family of Christ. All talk seemed to be of the fancy people attending the service, the fact a bishop was performing it, and the long line of Gilmores Jack was following in the footsteps of.

“Can someone follow in footsteps when they can’t even walk yet?” Lorelai asked Luke, who shook his head slightly, wearing an expression that asked her to please stop.

“Grandma, you do remember that we’re having him christened as a Mariano, right?” said Rory quickly. “I mean, I know Jack is a Gilmore on my side, but he’s registered Mariano after Jess. Once we’re married, we all want to have the same name.”

“Of course we know that, dear,” said Richard with a warm smile when it seemed Emily was unwilling to respond or even look away from her precious great-grandson. “We’re proud to have both Marianos present included in our family,” he said, looking at Jess.

“Thank you,” he answered politely, though the way he was fidgeting beside Rory proved he really would rather be anywhere but here.

She put her hand into his and intertwined their fingers, giving him an encouraging smile when he glanced her way.

“Just breathe,” she whispered. “You’re doing great.”

“Yeah? ‘Cause I don’t feel very Tony Tiger right now,” he countered just as softly.

“Here’s my boy!” exclaimed Emily with evident joy as she lifted Jack from his car seat and held him aloft.

Lorelai bit her lip before a The Lion King reference slipped out. As much as she loved to make her mother crazy, today wasn’t a good day for it. Jess looked set to bolt already and Rory was clearly not comfortable, caught between her new family and the Gilmore Elders. Lorelai needed to be helping right now, not hindering. Of course when Jack made a grab for Great Grandma Emily’s earring and almost yanked it clean out of her ear, it was impossible not to snigger just a little bit.

“Oh, Grandma, I’m sorry!” said Rory quickly, rushing to retrieve her son from Emily’s arms. “Jack, no,” she reminded her son. “We don’t grab.”

“Yeah, he sure has reached that grabby hands stage already,” said Lorelai. “Which most guys never quite grow out of, thankfully,” she winked at Luke who visibly coloured. “Seriously though, Mom, it’s lucky he didn’t get that thing out of your ear. The kid is all for shoving just about anything in his mouth and I don’t think swallowing the family jewels would be a great start to a christening day.”

Emily was busy checking herself in the nearest mirror, glad to see no real damage had been done either to her earring or the lobe it was attached to. It had to hurt though, even Jess realised that.

“Hey, no attacking Grandma, bubba,” he told his son, a gentle hand to Jack’s head as Rory held the little boy in her lap. “When somebody throws you a party, Miss Manners says you gotta be grateful, whether you like it or not.”

Rory gave him a look that said he was walking a fine line, and yet she was smiling all the same because she just couldn't help it.

Emily didn’t say a word.

* * *

“I baptise you, Jack Lucas Richard Mariano, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

Rory felt oddly emotional as she watched her son go through the process of being christened. He made no fuss as the water was tipped over his head and even reached for the bishop’s hand, presumably wanting another dousing. He behaved impeccably throughout, making no noise or fuss, which was pretty miraculous given how rambunctious he could usually be.

“You okay?” asked Jess in a whisper, his hand finding hers a moment.

“Yeah, I’m good,” she smiled across at him, turning to look as Jack was handed back to Lane.

She stood alongside Zach and Jackson as the full set of Godparents. Apparently it was tradition for a boy to have two Godfathers and one Godmother, and though family members could be selected, Rory and Jess decided to go outside of the circle to include their friends. Well, Rory made the suggestion and Jess went with it, since none of this really mattered to him in the first place. He did trust that Lane and Zach would do their best by Jack, particularly the former. No-one was better qualified to look after a kid's spiritual well-being than Mrs Kim's daughter! Jackson was chosen mostly because he was Sookie’s husband and a boy was just not allowed two Godmothers, at least Emily said not anyway. Besides, he already had two kids of his own, so there was father experience in place too.

The ceremony ended with a final prayer, and Jess watched his son looking around at the crowd from the safety of Lane’s arms, whilst the bishop blessed them all. In his head, Jess said his own prayer, just asking God to look out for his son no matter what.

‘I know he wasn’t made in a marriage like you’d want, but that’s not his fault. One things’s for sure, he came out of love, but then I’m pretty sure you already know that’.

“Jess?” said Rory, pulling on his hand. “You okay?” she checked, glad to see him smile.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he promised her, squeezing her hand in his own. “I guess today wasn’t so bad.”

“I guess not,” she agreed, grinning as Jack laughed loudly and the joyful noise echoed through the whole church.


	13. Then She Appeared - 5th January 2022

“Hey, Moonbrain!” said Jess more loudly, lightly tapping Jack upside his head.

His son reacted suddenly, looking over with surprise. He clearly hadn’t even realised he had zoned out, ignoring his father who had probably been talking to him this whole time.

“Sorry,” he apologised. “Er, what did I miss?”

Jess tilted his head a little as he stared at his son. Something was going on here, something not normal. Jack got thoughtful sometimes. He had a tendency towards the brooding thing that Jess allowed to happen to himself at times but that only lasted so long before he turned into the male incarnation of Rory. Jack would start by asking one or both of his parent their opinion on a topic, and then giving his own ideas quickly and relentlessly, rationalising away the problem before either Rory or Jess really got a chance to assist. This was different, this wasn’t some unknown issue that would come out later. Jess knew that look his son was wearing, he remembered it very well from his own teenage years.

“What’s her name?” he asked with a smirk that was hard to repress.

“Huh? Who are we talking about?” asked Jack in all innocence, at least that was the look and tone he was going for - it didn’t work.

“Seriously? You’re gonna do that fake dumb thing that you couldn’t pull off if your life depended on it?” asked Jess, moving down the counter to pour coffee into empty cups of other patrons, working his way back towards Jack. “C’mon, just tell me the name of the girl that has your brain so busy, because if you don’t, I will tell all the women in this family to bug you until you cave. You really think the Mom-Grandma-Sister tag team is preferable to talking to me?”

Jack let out a heavy sigh and added an eye-roll for good measure. He really didn’t want to admit that he may yet have discovered love at first sight today, but when the new girl walked into English class and smiled in his general direction, Jack lost all sense of reason. She had been on his mind all day whether she was within staring distance or not, and Jack wasn’t sure how this had happened to him so fast.

“It’s not just that she’s beautiful, which she is,” he said before anything else, speaking in a low voice as he and his father leaned across the counter towards each other, mindful of all the ever-alert ears in the Hollow. “The teacher called on her a couple of times in class and she gave these really deep answers, and she completely tied Mr Kuroda in knots with her theory on the character’s motivation, it was awesome.”

“So she’s smart and she’s hot,” Jess nodded approvingly. “I know the type,” he said definitely, thinking of Rory but giving no indication of that.

It might freak Jack out just a little too much to realise he was fast falling for a girl that was quite similar to his own mother. Jess would be a little weirded out himself if not for the fact he already knew very well how many similarities he and Jack shared. Such was the way with fathers and sons sometimes.

“It’s more than that,” Jack insisted. “I mean, there a lot of hot girls at SHH, but Alison is... She’s really beautiful.”

Jess bit back another smirk and just nodded that he understood. This really was a big deal if the word ‘beautiful’ was being thrown around. Jack wasn’t exactly a horn dog, not like his buddy Alex who had been on heat since puberty hit, and it had come just as early as it could to that boy. Jack was more subtle, but he noticed girls well enough, and he knew what it meant for a female of the species to be attractive, just as all guys did. Beautiful was different. Beautiful was for a woman you cared about rather than one you’d like to meet under the bleachers to make out. In terms of Jess’ experience, Alison seemed to be a Rory rather than a Shane.

“So she’s beautiful, she has brains, and she’s named after a Costello song,” Jess summarised whilst wiping down the counter, gesturing for Jack to bus the nearest table whilst he was waxing lyrical on the wonderful Alison. “No wonder you like this chick.”

“Dad! She’s not a chick, she’s... different. Special,” he said definitely.

“Like stop eating the paste special?” he checked jokingly.

Jack was not impressed.

“Like I think I’m in love special,” he blurted out, much to the surprise of not just Jess but himself too. “But I’m probably not.”

Jess opened his mouth to say something but then closed it again fast. Falling in love was something that some teenagers did every week of their lives. They thought they were in love with movie stars, musicians, those people who were famous just for being famous which Jess never quite understood, or they picked a different person at their school to fawn over until they got bored and shifted onto the next.

There were crushes, there was dating, but genuine love was rare as gold dust. Jess should know. Of all the girls that passed through his life, there was only one who ever had his heart, the same one he had married and made two babies with. Jack wasn’t the type to think he was in love unless he was. He had the heart of a poet and the brains of a genius, plus more good sense than Jess ever possessed when he was a teen. If Jack thought he was in love at barely sixteen, then there was a good chance he was. This could get messy.

The bell jingled over the door and Miss Patty walked in, gossiping already with Babette at her side. Jess shook his head and turned to glance at Jack. The kid already had his books piled up and his bag thrown on his shoulder. His butt was up off the stool before his father could speak at all.

“I’ll see you at home, Dad,” he said and then he was gone.

Jess blinked and then turned to the two women who replaced Jack at the counter.

“Ladies, what I can get you?” he offered with a winning smile.

“Was it something we said, sugar?” asked Babette, hiking her thumb back towards the door through which Jack had hastily passed.

“Nah, he’s just got a lot on his mind. Homework and stuff,” he half-lied. “Now, what’s your pleasure?” he tried again to take their order.

“Oh, Jess, honey, rephrase the question, please!” Miss Patty urged him, leaning all over the counter. “The thoughts in my head are positively sinful right now,” she told him as her eyes raked over his body.

“Still married, Patty,” he reminded her with a grin, tapping the ring on his finger for emphasis. “But if Rory ever lets me off the leash, you’ll be the first to know.”

“You bad boy!” the dance teacher told him with a girlish giggle that really didn’t belong to a woman of her advancing years, but that never stopped her before.

She and Babette ordered their food then, and Jess busied himself with getting the coffees to go along with. He had his back to his patrons, not paying a heck of a lot of attention to what was being said. Still, it was hard to ignore Babette and Patty when they were in full flow, they were never exactly quiet about their gossip.

“I heard she’s a real beauty, tall too, like her father,” said the blonde. “’Course I also heard she had smarts. No offence to the parents, but where in the heck did the brains come from?”

“Well, not everything is about genetics, honey,” her friend told her. “And I don’t think she was especially dumb. Taking him back after what he did wasn’t the smartest move, but they seem to have done okay since the whole leaving town thing.”

“Y’know why they came back? ‘Cause East Side Tilly said she was told it had to do with his parents, that maybe his father was sick?”

“Oh, that’s just awful!”

“Here you go, ladies,” said Jess as he turned and presented Babette and Patty with their drinks. “Food will just be a few minutes.”

“Thank you, darling” said Patty with a smile. “Well now, you see just about everything from behind this counter, Jess. Have you seen anything of your old adversary yet?”

“My what now?” he asked, feeling a little confused.

“Dean Forester, sugar,” said Babette, loud and blunt as ever. “Y’know him and Lindsay moved back to town all sudden and everything, with a teenage daughter in tow. She started Stars Hollow High just today. Did Jack mention any new girls at all?”

Jess wasn’t sure what it felt like to have a heart attack or a stroke for that matter, and yet he was pretty sure in this moment he was having one or the other, quite possibly both at once. The blood rushed and pounded in his ears, so loud that he could barely hear what Babette was saying anymore. Shaking himself out of a momentary haze, Jess refocused his eyes and forced himself to form words.

“You know the girl’s name?” he checked, trying to sound as calm and cool as he usually would be, even though he felt anything but.

“Oh, that I do know,” said Patty easily. “Alison Jane Forester” she said proudly.

After the first three syllables had left her lips, Jess’ legs were already in motion. He was over by the door in the fewest number of strides possible, opening it up and announcing that the diner was closing - now!

“But, sugar, we didn’t even get our order yet...” Babette began to complain.

Jess would not be moved. He apologised, said they would open up again just as soon as possible, and that Miss Patty and Babette would get whatever they wanted on the house, but for now he really had to close. Getting home and talking to his wife was priority one.

* * *

“Rory!” 

She physically jumped when her name was called and the front door slammed in the wake of her husband’s entrance. Rory wasn’t sure what was going on but Jess wasn’t due home yet, plus he did not sound happy at all. With Victoria helping out her Grandma Lorelai at the inn, and Jack having texted not long ago to say he was studying over at Alex’s house, neither of them could really be the cause for Jess’ concern. Rory abandoned her laptop in the bedroom, tossing her glasses onto the desk before pelting down the stairs.

“What’s happening? Where’s the fire?” she asked Jess as she found him searching the lower level of the house for her.

“You know who’s back in town?” he asked, meeting her at the foot of the stairs.

Rory felt herself wince, giving away the fact she knew just exactly what Jess was talking about.

“Yeah, I did hear a little something,” she admitted, one hand to head as she anticipated an explosion. “Starts with F, ends in orrester?”

“Give my wife a coconut,” said Jess, dead-pan as ever, before letting out a long breath and turning away from her.

Rory knew he said ‘my wife’ on purpose. He could’ve used a myriad of other terms, but no, on this occasion Jess was doing what all men were want to do when they felt threatened - mark their territory. Rory frowned some when she realised how gross that sounded in her own head, but she didn’t mean it in the literal way that other mammals had of making things clearly their own. Guys were sensitive about both things and people they saw as belonging to them. Rory didn’t take offence at the fact because she new full well Jess didn’t really think he owned her. He was possessive though, in a way that she actually quite liked most of the time. It was nice to feel that wanted and needed, even after so many years married. The fact they were still together and happy ought to prove the solidity of their marriage. Rory couldn’t imagine why the return of Dean, and by extension Lindsay, had Jess so riled up.

“This doesn’t really affect us, right?” she said, reaching a hand out to his shoulder, encouraging her husband to turn around. “Jess, it’s been twenty years since that particular triangle got all figured out.”

“Sure,” he nodded his agreement as he faced her. “Now fasten your seatbelt because the next bumpy ride just got started. You seen Jack today?”

“Not since he left for school this morning,” admitted Rory with a shake of her head. “He text a few minutes ago, said he was studying at Alex’s house, but he’d be home for dinner. Why? What’s wrong?”

“You didn’t hear the best part yet,” he told her, taking a breath, putting his hands to Rory’s waist as he met her eyes. “The Jolly Green Giant and his doting wife made themselves a pretty little princess. Age of fifteen, answers to the name of Alison.”

“Okay...” Rory nodded along, so far still not seeing where they were going here.

“Jack just told me he’s in love.”

“In love?” she echoed, eyes widening. “Not with... Oh God!” she gasped with sudden and overwhelming realisation. “That’s... Of all the people in the world?!” she exclaimed.

Jess was glad to see he wasn’t the only one that had a problem with this whole situation. After all, he knew he had a habit of over-reacting sometimes and Rory was usually the calming, sensible influence that stopped him from flying off the handle. On this occasion at least Jess and Rory were on the same page - this little revelation meant trouble.

“Tell me about it. ‘Cause what would really improve my life ten-fold is playing happy families with your twelve foot tall ex,” he said with a heavy sigh of defeat.

There was no easy way out of this, not if Jack was serious about the feelings he already had for Alison Forrester.

“Well, maybe it won’t come to that,” Rory suggested hopefully. “I mean, who falls in love after one look at a girl when they’re sixteen?”

Jess raised an eyebrow as he shot her a significant look.

“You know that one you like to use ‘like father, like son’?” he reminded her.

Rory winced.

“Yeah,” she nodded then, moving to hug Jess tight. “This is going to be awkward, isn’t it?”

There was no answer to be given, mostly because Rory already knew she was right. Of all the people in all the world for Jack to get his first crush on and he chose Dean and Lindsay’s daughter. Hopefully it was just a passing fancy, but if not, there was no doubting that life just got a whole lot more complicated than before.


	14. Boys Day Out - 1st September 2006

Sometimes women just needed alone time to relax and gossip, at least that’s what they told their significant others and the guys were loathe to argue. Both Rory and Lorelai had been significantly busy in their own lives that they claimed to have barely seen each other to talk for way too long. This seemed to coincidence just perfectly with Lorelai being ‘gifted’ two tickets to a spa, which wasn’t at all suspicious. Neither Luke nor Jess were really buying that they had been deprived of each other that much, but since they loved their wives and appreciated that they missed each other a lot since they weren’t together constantly these days, if they wanted a spa weekend, then that was exactly what they were going to get. Lorelai said Luke should have Caesar and the other wait staff handle the diner so he could spend some quality boys time with Jess and Jack, especially since he was due to be the father of a son before too long. Though it didn’t seem like a necessity to Luke, he couldn’t deny that a little alone   
time with the guys in his family could be cool. As soon as the girls backs were turned they talked of making it a fairly lazy day, since Jack would be perfectly fine with that too - boy, were they ever wrong!

By the time Luke drove over to the apartment, Jess was already set to explode from the frustration of his son running circles around him like a crazy person.

“He’s been up since six a.m. and somehow he’s on a sugar high without the sugar,” Jess explained through gritted teeth, as little Jack ran around and around him, arms out-stretched making airplane noises just as loud as he could. “And I’m going to scream like a girl any second now!”

“Take a breath, nephew,” his uncle advised, patting him on the shoulder as he walked into the apartment.

Swooping down he picked up Jack and flew him around in the air, still making his airplane sounds and positions. The kid really thought he was flying and wondered at the feeling, before collapsing into giggles when Luke started to tickle his ribs.

“No, Grandpa!” he laughed until he could barely breathe. “No tickle, no!” he protested through fits of giggles.

“Okay,” Luke relented, dropping down onto the couch with the kid in his lap. “No more tickles and no more planes, okay? I think we’re giving Daddy a headache,” he said with a smirk Jess would’ve been proud of. “You think you were any different at his age?” he asked him.

“How should I know?” asked Jess grumpily as he started picking up toys and books that Jack had left all over the floor in his mission to be the craziest kid ever.

“The quiet little bookworm came later, trust me,” said Luke definitely. “Toddler-sized, you were exactly like this.”

The way he said it got Jess’ attention and he caught his uncle staring at Jack with a look akin to wonderment. It was weird to think that used to be him, that he would’ve been sat on Luke’s knee at that same age, treated as Jack was. Jess had no solid memory of Luke from back then. He couldn’t help thinking that if he had stayed with this man who had been so much like a father to him he might’ve turned out better, but he supposed it had all come right in the end anyhow.

“Jess?” said Luke with a look of concern. “You okay?”

“Sure, yeah,” he smiled, quick to cover for the moment of thoughtfulness. “Er, so how about we head out to the park for a while, burn off a little of this excess energy you seem to have found, little buddy?” he asked Jack, walking over to pick the kid up from Luke’s lap. “What do you say? You think we can convince Grandpa Luke to make us up a picnic?”

“Yeah!” the little boy cheered. “Pleeeeease, Grandpa? Pleeeease?” he asked desperately, the way only the cutest little kids could and get away with it.

“I get a day off from making food and the first thing you guys want is for me to make food?” he asked with a mock-stern look that soon crumbled into a smile. “Fine, I’ll make a picnic,” he said with an eye roll as he got up and schlepped his way through to the kitchen.

Jess chuckled at the show his uncle put on and Jack clapped and cheered happily. The park was a good place to go. With two of them watching the kid, Jack couldn’t really come to any harm, and running around in circles for a while should tire him out. No doubt there would be other kids to play with too, giving Jess and Luke a chance to talk or just relax for a little bit. It was what the girls were doing after all. They all worked hard, they all deserved a little down time. Of course, that didn’t mean they were going to get it.

* * *

“I swear I don’t get it,” said Luke with a heavy sigh as he trudged into the apartment behind Jess.

The moment they were in, Jess put Jack down on his feet and the kid went tearing around and around the living room. They had been out pretty much all day, and still Jack had energy to spare. He had Luke tossing a kid-sized football around for a while, then he hit the swings, the slide, the hippety hop, all the activities the park had to offer. Jess constantly had to keep an eye out and stop Jack from actively throwing himself off the jungle gym or anything else that might break a limb or worse. The boy just had no fear and Jess wanted to go crazy at him for that. Unfortunately, he knew for sure he had been the same once upon a time. Luke knew it too, so it was hard to be mad about it.

They got a few minutes peace when Jack got hungry and came to sit down on the blanket with his father and grandpa to eat, but all of a minute after finishing up eating everything in sight (a trait he definitely got from his mother) he was on the move again.

“I swear he’s solar-powered or something,” said Luke as he went over to the couch and collapsed onto it. “How is he still going?”

“I don’t know. Your wife is usually the Energiser bunny in the room,” said Jess with a shrug, pushing his hair back off his forehead with his whole hand.

“That’s the coffee,” said Luke knowingly. “This kid is just... I mean, seriously, never, ever let him have caffeine!” he said definitely, groaning when Jack suddenly appeared in front of him and tried to throw himself bodily onto his grandpa.

“Want play?” he asked with shining eyes and a grin nobody could resist.

“Jack!” Jess called for his attention. “No more games with Grandpa right now,” he smirked terribly, always taking too much pleasure in referring to Luke by such a title. “He’s feeling old and tired.”

“Yeah, ‘cause Daddy looks like he has so much energy right now,” said Luke with a look that Jess tried to ignore.

“Daddy play!” said Jack with delight, running at him instead and crashing into his legs.

“Yeah, we can play, but something quiet and calm, okay?” he suggested. “How about a nice game that requires nothing more than turning cards?” he tried.

Jack looked thoughtful a while and then went pelting away to his room. Jess let out a long sigh and came over to sit on the carpet near the armchair. His head went back into the seat and Luke laughed a little.

“You look like I feel,” he told his nephew.

“You can laugh, Luke, but you got all this to come,” he reminded him. “How many months now ‘til Lorelai makes you the father of a son, huh?”

“Hey, I am so ready for that,” his uncle told him firmly. “My kid is going to be a lot calmer than this.”

“You’re kidding, right?” said Jess, taking his turn to laugh. “Your son is also going to be Lorelai’s son,” he reminded him. “And you think he’s gonna be calmer than Jack?”

Luke’s eyes went a little wide at the prospect but he didn’t say anything as the little boy in question came running back with a precariously balanced pile of boxes in his arms. He came crashing to the floor, all the lids coming off a little as he landed on the carpet. Jess winced at the sound but recovered fast.

“Couldn’t pick just one thing, huh, buddy?” he asked Jack who shook his head,

“We play this, this, this, an’ this,” he said, pointing to one after the other. “Okay?”

Jess wanted to say no, but he really couldn’t bring himself to do it. He glanced at Luke who was fighting the urge to doze off on the couch and knew he was the only entertainment his son was going to get for the next few hours. It would be a while before he stood any chance of getting the kid to go to bed, and Rory wasn’t due back until late tomorrow. At least these games could be played sitting down and Jess was glad about that.

“Okay, let’s play,” he said to Jack, tapping on the first box.

Jack happily pushed the others aside and tipped the big cardboard animal dominoes all over thr carpet. Jess smiled as he watched him, listening intently as he explained the rules in childlike fashion, oblivious to the fact that there wasn’t an adult alive that didn’t know them already. Moments like this were things to be treasured, Jess knew that much. He would do just about anything for his son, no matter what. The little things mattered as much as the big moments. Jess barely got either growing up. His kid was having everything, no question. He was never, ever letting this little boy down.

* * *

“I know you think I’m crazy...” said Rory as they came into the apartment.

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” her mother assured her. “I mean, yeah, maybe a little for giving up the chance to be in that beautiful, beautiful spa for another twenty four hours,” she considered. “But hey, I get the draw of a good-looking husband and an adorable kid as much as the next person, I just...”

Lorelai finally stopped talking when she realised there was no longer any walking happening. Rory had stopped all of three steps inside the apartment door and stood staring into the living room. Lorelai frowned and squeezed by her to see what the big deal was. It was quite a sight to see. Luke was flagged out on the couch fast asleep, his hat askew and a colouring book dangling off his lap.

On the floor, Jess was also sleeping, propped up a little on the base of the armchair and a pillow in a position that couldn’t really be comfortable. Jack was sprawled on top of his father, as sound asleep as anybody else. It was perhaps the most adorable thing the Gilmore girls had ever seen.

“Aaaaw, they all had a big day,” said Lorelai softly but with a grin that wouldn’t shift.

“I guess so,” Rory nodded, just staring at the cuteness of her husband and child. “Seems a shame to wake them.”

“Agreed,” her mother said, looking across to the other door. “You think we can pick our way through to the kitchen to get to the coffee without waking them up?”

“We don’t have decaff here,” said Rory with a look.

Lorelai blew her hair off her forehead with exasperation and muttered ‘busted’. She was about to make further suggestions about where they could go and what they could do, but soon realised there was no point. Rory’s eyes and mind were fixed on the scene before her, not so much Luke obviously, but on Jess and Jack. Lorelai had to admit, it was pretty special seeing father and son all snuggly and cute. Her hand went absently to her middle and she smiled thinking how that could be Luke and their baby someday soon. It certainly was too sweet a moment to spoil with words, and so they stood just staring a while.

“You don’t think this is getting creepy now?” asked Lorelai when five minutes had passed.

Rory shook herself and frowned.

“Probably, yeah,” she agreed. “Let’s go back to the Hollow for a while,” she suggested, headed for the door.

Still she couldn’t resist one more quick glance back at her boys. Rory knew then more than ever that she couldn’t be happier and she couldn’t love her family more.


	15. First Day -  1st September 2010

Jack didn’t want to go to school. It wasn’t that he was afraid of mixing with other children because he already had at least one friend in the form of Martha Belville. It wasn’t that he had to be worried about being one of the more underdeveloped kids, either physically or mentally. He wasn’t the tallest boy of five, but he certainly wasn’t the shortest, and he already knew his numbers and alphabet. In fact, he had started reading and was obsessed with his books, making both Rory and Jess incredibly happy and proud. With all these things considered, it was hard to understand why he put up such a fight when it came to joining the kindergarten class, but he really, really did not want to go.

“C’mon, Jack. You gotta go to school,” said Jess, feeling like the biggest hypocrite on the planet, even though Jack would have no idea about that yet. “You’ll love it when you get there.”

“No!” he protested, moving to a different spot under his duvet. “Not going!” he insisted.

“Kid, you can try all you want, but if it comes to it, I’ll just drag you out from under there and carry you the whole way kicking and screaming the way Grandma Liz used to do with me,” he said, borderline angry now because they had been doing this for a good half hour.

“Not going! Not going!” Jack repeated, sounding just as mad, kicking his legs so that the duvet rose and fell madly in one corner.

“Still no luck, huh?” asked Rory as she appeared in the doorway with her daughter on her hip. “I can’t understand it.”

“Me either,” Jess agreed, rubbing his aching forehead as he got up and came over to his wife. “You wanna give it a try? Because I’m all out of ideas.”

“Okay,” she nodded, handing off Victoria to Jess.

“C’mon, baby girl,” he said, bouncing her and making her giggle. “You want pancakes for breakfast?” he offered.

“Yay! Pancakes!” she enthused, clapping her hands wildly and practically doing a happy dance in his arms.

Jess laughed at her antics and kissed her as he carried her off to the kitchen. Rory watched them go and then turned back into Jack’s room, not entirely surprised to find him peeking out from under the covers now.

“Pancakes?” he checked. “Can I have pancakes, Mommy?”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” she said as sternly as she could manage. “If you’re not going to go to school, maybe you shouldn’t have pancakes,” she told him, coming to sit on the edge of the bed beside him, encouraging him to come out and face her properly.

“Toria gets pancakes. She doesn’t go to school,” said Jack grumpily.

Rory frowned some as a thought entered her head. They hadn’t been able to come up with any logical explanation for Jack not wanting to go to school. He loved reading, drawing, and playing with his friends, and though he adored his parents, Rory knew he could cope without them, because he had to sometimes. He was respectful and sweet with any adult that had him in their charge, so she coldn’t imagine the idea of being with a teacher all day phased him. He would have Martha for company, and Davey would be there at recess and lunch too. Now she was wondering if it wasn’t so much what he was going to gain by going to school that scared Jack but rather what he felt he was losing.

“Jack?” she said, encouraging her son to come closer before pulling him into her lap. “Do you wish that Tori were going to school with you?” she asked him.

He looked everywhere but at her, the expression on his face so familiar to Rory that she couldn’t help but smile. In this moment, Jack had never been more like Jess, struggling with feelings he almost wished he didn’t have and certainly didn’t know how to express properly.

“Love Toria,” he said eventually. “I take care of her. Have to be here. No school!” he argued in the way only a five year old could, and Rory bit her lip as tears sprang to her eyes.

Now she understood. It wasn’t really that Jack didn’t want to go to school, it was only that he didn’t want to leave his little sister. These past two and a half years, they spent all their time telling Jack what a great big brother he was, how it was important he helped to look after the baby in the family. Giving him such an important role ensured he never felt pushed out when Victoria came along. The problem it had caused was that he now thought Tori couldn’t do without him, and perhaps even more than that, he couldn’t do without her.

“Oh, baby,” said Rory, pulling Jack close and kissing the top of his head. “Y’know Tori loves her big brother, and she’ll miss you a lot while you’re at school. I know you’ll miss her too, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go,” she explained. “See, you have to go and learn things so that when it’s Tori’s turn to start kindergarten, you’ll already know everything she has to learn. You’ll be able to help her and look out for her at recess, show her how everything works. How are you gonna do that if you don’t go on ahead and learn for yourself?” she asked him.

Jack frowned as he worked through all that his mother told him. He was a good big brother, everybody said so. If he needed to go to school to continue being everything he could be for Toria, then he supposed that was what he should do. He didn’t like it, he still didn’t want to leave his little sister behind, but if that was what Mommy said he had to do, well, she was usually right.

“Okay,” he said at last. “I go to school,” he nodded firmly.

“That’s my good boy,” Rory told him happily, letting him down onto the floor. “Now, let’s get you dressed and ready to go, and then we can see if Daddy has any pancakes left for us!”

* * *

It became a real family event when Jack finally had to leave the house to go to school. Lorelai came along with Luke and Billy in tow to wish the little boy well. She gave the kid a hug and gave her best Kindergarten level advice.

“Just two things you need to know, okay, little man?” she said definitely. “One, don’t eat the paste, and two, if they ask for volunteers to pass out the milk, raise your hand, because that’s how you get extra.”

“Mom!” Rory complained at the supposed corruption of her son, but then she laughed because it was really hard not to.

“You’re gonna do great, kid,” Luke told Jack then.

“Do great,” Billy intoned, nodding his head.

It was his favourite game lately, just repeating the last part of anything anybody else said. As annoying as it got sometimes, nobody discouraged him. Lorelai of all people wanted a kid that could talk early and a lot, so she was all for any words that came out of his mouth.

“Okay, as much as we all appreciate the good advice for Jack, we’re gonna be late if we don’t move,” said Rory, checking her watch.

“Then let’s go,” Jess suggested with a look. “I’ll be at the diner just as soon as we drop him off, Luke,” he told his uncle who said he would see him then.

Lorelai and Luke left, waving all the way with Billy doing the same as the Mariano clan headed off to the school. There was a spring in Jack’s step that sure hadn’t been there before and he stretched up to tell his sister how he was going to do all these fantastic things at school and then he would come home and tell her all about it. Before she had to go to school herself, Jack would have it all figured out and be able to help Toria with everything.

Jess looked at Rory and they shared a secret smile. She sure had got through to the kid in the end, finally convincing Jack that school was the place he should be. There was no doubting once he got there he would love it, but he needed that encouragement to go in the first place.

“I go school?” said Tori then, getting Daddy’s attention.

“Not yet, baby girl,” he told her. “Someday soon though. You get to be the baby just a little bit longer,” he promised, kissing her temple.

“It’ll come around fast enough,” said Rory with a sigh. “But for now just one of you going to school is enough for me,” she told Jack who was now actively pulling on her hand to get to the school faster.

Turning the corner, they finally arrived at Stars Hollow Elementary. The second Martha set eyes on Jack she came running over, slipping her hand out of Jackson’s own before he had a chance to react. Davey came pelting after her, forever keeping his little sister out of trouble, such was the lot of a boy of almost-seven who had two younger siblings needing his attention. Rory was happy enough to see Jack and Martha gab away together about all the exciting things that school could entail.

“Big day, huh?” said Sookie as she came over, carrying Jaime in her arms. “First kid’s first day. I still can’t believe it’s Martha’s turn. It seems like just yesterday Davey was starting, and then before you know it Jaime and Tori will be taking their turn... I feel so old!” she complained, eyes welling with tears.

“Sookie, you’re not old,” Rory assured her. “But it is weird to be standing here sending my kid off into school. The last five years have just been like the Bullet train passing through,” she shook her head, hardly able to believe it.

“Choo-choo!” Tori declared on hearing the word ‘train’.

“Oh, right, sweetie. Choo-choo goes the train!” Sookie encouraged her with a smile. “Can you say that, honey?” she asked Jaime then. “Choo-choo?”

The toddler in her arms barely reacted and then suddenly pointed at something in the middle-distance.

“Doggie!” she declared, much to the amusement of all the adults present.

“She’s going through an animal phase,” explained Jackson, at which Jess nodded, not daring to make a comment.

The bell rang then and it was time for the school-goers to head inside. Martha and Jack were quite prepared to wander off at first until their parents called them back. First day meant being escorted right into the classroom so moms and dads could see the teacher and ensure she knew which kid belonged to who, how they were getting home, and what the lunch arrangements were. Rory and Jess had already met Ms Bamber before but it was nice to see her again and have the reassurance that she was pleased to have Jack in her class and would take very good care of him, of course.

“Bye, Mommy. Bye, Daddy!” said Jack, dutifully hugging and kissing both parents, before reaching for his sister.

Jess crouched down so the kids could hug each other and Jack planted a sloppy kiss on Victoria’s cheek.

“Be good girl, and I be back soon,” he told her.

“Bye bye, Jack,” she waved to him, looking just a little sad that he was going somewhere, anywhere without her. “Love Jack.”

“Love Toria,” he promised, grabbing her waving hand for a moment before turning and running away to play with the other kids.

Rory felt stupidly emotional at the exchange and Jess couldn’t help but notice. He put his free arm around her shoulders as they headed out of the school and back down the street. Tori curled into Daddy’s shoulder, clearly feeling the loss of her brother already.

“Five years old, a student,” said Rory. “How’d that happen?”

“Kid’s grow up,” Jess shrugged. “But hey, it’s a good thing, right? You wouldn’t want to be running around after babies forever.”

“Tori baby,” she told her parents quickly. “Baby!” she said, pointing to herself.

“Yeah, you’re still Momma’s baby,” Rory agreed, taking her from Jess’ arms into her own. “But I guess some day you’re gonna grow up too, and then we’ll be old,” she told Jess sadly.

“We're not old!” he insisted, hugging her close. “And even when you are, you’ll still be beautiful and amazing, and I’ll still have the most incredible wife on the planet,” he promised her.

He didn’t make such declarations often, but when he did, it was that much more special. Rory let her head fall onto his shoulder a moment as they continued on towards home.

Life kept moving on, the great wheel kept on turning, but Rory always had her family, her husband and her kids, and she couldn’t really be any happier if she tried.


	16. Romance Ain’t Dead - 6th May 2005

Jess hadn’t had the best day ever. It just seemed long somehow and arriving home felt good. That didn’t mean he wasn’t confused when he put his key in the door and opened it up to a scene he was not expecting at all. Usually he would find Rory either tending to Jack, or busying herself with some task or other whilst the baby took a nap. At this time of day, it was likely she would have the kid ready for bed and maybe just waiting for Jess to come home before she put him down. It seemed to Jess that if anybody was ready for bed uncommonly early today it wasn’t his son but Rory herself.

“Hi,” he said uncertainly, stepping into the romantically lit apartment and facing Rory who was dressed in a short black silky-fabric robe that he’d never seen before.

“Hi,” she replied in kind, pushing her hair back from her face in an almost nervous gesture. “I was starting to worry you were running late.”

“Sorry,” he shook his head slightly, still feeling dazed by the scene he had walked into, the mood lighting and Rory in her lack of clothing. “Not that I’m complaining,” he told her, as she came to stand right in front of him. “But what’s going on?” he asked her.

Rory smiled, encouraged him out of his jacket and then put her arms around Jess without a word, kissing him soundly on the lips. He wasted no time in wrapping his arms around her, pulling her close as he kissed her back with all the passion he felt, and that was a lot. They parted a second later and Rory took in a deep and very necessary breath.

“I went to the doctor’s office today,” she told him softly. “Jack got his checks and everything is good. I got a little checking myself,” she explained then. “And I’m all good too.”

The look in her eyes told Jess a whole lot more than her words. Of course it was great to hear that a doctor had said everything was going okay with their son and with Rory, but this night meant more than good health. This meant that after what felt like a painfully long wait, Jess might finally get to make love to his Rory again.

“You sure?” he checked he had this right, as determined not to mess up now as he had been the very first time they went down this road together.

“I’m sure,” she nodded, smiling widely. “Jack insisted on staying over at Grandma Lorelai’s tonight,” she joked of their six week old son. “So...”

She barely got in another breath before Jess kissed her long and hard on the lips, hands running up and down her back as he pulled her body flush against his own.

They had waited a very long time to be this close. The Summer of their reunion had been a beautiful time in their lives but once Rory discovered she was pregnant, things just changed. The bigger she got, the less chance there was to be truly intimate. Between her mood swings and fatigue, as well as the physical size of her body, Rory and Jess had to abandon all hope of any semblance of sex in the way they understood it until after the baby came. Then it was a waiting game for Rory to heal and everything to settle down. Now the moment had arrived. It had been a very long time in coming.

“Jess,” she gasped when his lips left hers and burnt a trail down her neck. “I love our life, our baby, everything about the way things are now,” she promised him. “But just for tonight, can’t this just be last Summer in New York?” she asked, meeting his eyes the moment he allowed her the chance, her fingers running through his hair. “I miss what we had then,” she said softly, leaning in close so her lips were right by his ear. “I miss the feel of you, inside of me.”

It was the single most erotic thing Rory Gilmore had ever said to him, and Jess felt his eyes roll back in his head just from the tone of voice she used. As if he didn’t know already that it had been way too long. He proved how much he wanted her when he pulled her tight to him, her feet coming off the floor as her legs wrapped around his waist. When he started kissing her again in that moment, Jess had no intention of stopping, and Rory clearly didn’t want him to. He staggered towards the bedroom, never letting up his assault on her senses, even as he kicked the bedroom door shut, and the pair of them fell into a heat of passion that had been too long missing from their lives.

* * *

“Well, I don’t think we lost anything through lack of practise,” said Rory breathlessly from the circle of Jess’ arms.

He smiled, kissing her bare shoulder. “I always said we had no problems in that department.”

She smiled too, remembering their first real kiss by the gas pumps, more than three years ago now. A part of her had known then that Jess should be her first, maybe even her only. He didn’t get either title in the end, but Rory was set on him being her last, which had to matter more in the end.

“You were always so patient with me in the beginning, and I know it killed you to hold back,” she said thoughtfully. “Even in New York you were a gentleman.”

“Until you made it impossible!” he told her, laughing because they both knew it was true.

“When a woman knows what she wants, why should she wait anymore?” she asked, looking up at him. “I mean, with the pregnancy and all, we didn’t really have a choice. I got a little taste of what you went through waiting on me. It was not fun,” she said definitely.

“Some things are worth the wait,” he shrugged easily. “Some people too,” he promised her, his hand at her cheek as he leaned down and kissed her chastely. “You are the most beautiful, incredible woman, Rory Gilmore. You know I love you, right?”

“I know,” she agreed happily. “I love you too.”

Her fingers trailed from his hair down his cheek and she couldn’t resist the urge to kiss him again, she was glad she didn’t have to. This night was all she wanted it to be so far and it was only just beginning. She had felt a little weird when it came to telling her mother what she had planned. Lorelai had understood though, immediately suggesting she take Jack for the night.

“I know you can work around it, but it’s just one night, and I don’t mind,” she told her daughter kindly. “It’s not like the kid’s going to care about being here with Grandma, and you and Jess deserve some alone time. After all, most people get plenty of that before they make babies. Yours was cut a little short in the beginning.”

That had certainly been true. Those few short weeks in New York before Rory discovered she was carrying Jack had been amazing. In her wildest dreams she hadn’t known sex could be like that, like this. That one time with Dean was a distant memory now, but she knew it had felt awkward and strange. All first times were a little like that she supposed, but with Jess, she never felt that way. He had been so gentle with her their first time, wiping away the memory of her previous boyfriend with every kiss and touch. That didn’t mean they didn’t have their fair share of passion going on. Rory and Jess always had that, even back when she made him stick to second base. There was no talk of stopping anything anymore. Rory couldn’t imagine ever not wanting to be making love with Jess.

“This enough like New York for you?” he asked as he pulled her on top of him, kissing her neck.

“Mmm, even better,” she told him happily.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. As good as it was then, I knew it had to end somehow, or at least I thought it did,” she confessed, pushing her hair back over her ear when it fell in his face. “Now I know this is forever, you and me. That makes it even better.”

“Yes, it does,” he agreed, pulling her down so he could kiss her again, rolling her onto her back and proving to her all over again just how much he adored her.

* * *

Rory had really gone to town on making tonight feel like last Summer in New York. After round two, when their energy started to give out, she threw on her robe and ran off to the kitchen to make dinner. Jess went into shock when he realised she was serious. Rory did not cook, never had, and probably never would. It actually scared him to think of her do anything but re-heat something they already had in the house. He gave chase to the kitchen and found her pulling one of Mrs R’s lasagnes from the freezer.

“This is familiar,” he said, leaning against the door jamb in nothing but his jeans and a smile.

“That’s the idea,” Rory grinned, pushing the tray into the oven that she had checked three times was set to the right temperature.

She didn’t have a chance to turn around before Jess’ arms were around her waist, pulling her against him. Not that she protested at all, she had no need or want to do such a thing.

“You want coffee with your food?” he asked between kisses that ran along her shoulder, the edge of her robe falling down and almost revealing everything.

“Please,” she sighed happily. “At least if you’re doing that we can’t get distracted and let the food burn,” she said as he let her go.

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Jess replied, making sure to catch an eyeful before Rory managed to get her robe retied. “You’re very distracting.”

“I’m glad you think so,” she smiled wide. “But seriously, I cannot go again until I eat. This body needs energy... and caffeine,” she added as he put on the machine and grabbed two mugs from the cupboard.

“This body is fantastic,” he told her in no uncertain terms, pulling her into his arms again. “Nobody would believe you had a baby six weeks ago.”

“The wonders of being pregnant when you’re still a teen,” she shrugged like it was nothing. “Honestly? I thought I was going to be enormous forever.”

“I’d’ve loved you anyway,” he promised, kissing her nose.

Rory giggled.

“I know you would, but I’m not so sure I’d’ve loved me,” she admitted. “For all that I want this night to be like New York, I’d appreciate you not impregnating me again right now,” she said, not even really joking.

“Duly noted,” Jess smirked. “I think between the birth control pills and the condoms, we’re as covered as we can be here.”

“Way to take the romance out.” 

“Hey, you brought it up first!”

“Shut up and kiss me.”

“As you wish,” he agreed, crashing his lips against hers one more time.

They were still making out up against the counter like the pair of teens they were, getting as far as her robe being wide open and his jeans unzipped when the oven timer went off at the same time the coffee machine boiled up. Only the promise of sustenance had the power to pull Rory away from her man. Jess would be offended if he wasn’t also kind of dying from hunger and thirst already.

Ten minutes later, they were sat on the bedroom floor, still in their state of semi undress, eating Mrs R’s delicious pasta dish with lots of coffee to wash it down. Jess never had managed to work out how Rory could make eating look so sexy, especially given the volume of food she could get into her so fast. Of course, he completely understood why watching her drink coffee got him going. Nobody should make those noises over a caffeinated beverage, it wasn’t normal!

“You’re cracked,” he told her as she moaned into her cup, more so to take his mind off what she was doing to him right now.

“And you love that about me,” she countered smartly.

“Rory, I love everything about you,” he reminded her easily.

“Right back at ya,” she giggled, dropping her fork onto her empty plate. “That was so good,” she declared, moving around close to Jess and settling herself against him, her eyes closing. “Hi.”

“Hey,” he replied, kissing the top of her head. “You’re tired? Now?” he checked, a little amazed and also kind if disappointed truth be told.

“Not really,” she told him. “Just comfy.”

Jess had to admit that he was too. Anywhere with Rory was comfortable for him. Nothing was better than having her in his arms, knowing she wasn’t going to go away, that he wasn’t either. She was right in what she said before. This night was kind of like New York last Summer but with one perfect twist - there was no ending here. Back then he had been constantly wondering how long they had left, when it would be necessary to call it quits and walk away. Now he was sure it would never happen, and nothing could make him happier.

“So...” he said, his hand running lazily up and down her arm. “You think we need to do these dishes now?”

“Hmm, probably not,” said Rory, opening her eyes slowly and looking up at him. “If this were last Summer, would you be doing dishes?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, a smirk coming to his lips as he teased her. “You got an alternative in mind?”

“I’ve got a hundred, mister,” she smirked right back at him, eyes sparkling with fun as she shifted her body against his and made him groan. “Depends on how much sleep you want tonight.”

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” he told her, pulling her as close as was physically possible. “You sure you can keep up?”

“I should be asking you that,” she countered between fevered kisses, gasping when she felt his answer to that question.

They didn’t make it onto the bed that time, but decided never to choose the floor over the comfort of a mattress ever again. Their deal about not caring if they slept certainly proved to be true, and by the time they went to pick up Jack in the morning, Rory and Jess both looked less than sober, despite the fact they hadn’t tasted a drop of alcohol that night. They were drunk on each other, and it was the best feeling in the world.


	17. Adventures in Babysitting - 17th November 2007

Determined to do her part in helping support her family, Emily had wasted no time in volunteering her services when it came to taking care of little Jack whilst Rory was still in the hospital. There were other people who could take him. Sure, Lane and Zack had the twins to cope with, and Luke and Lorelai had Billy already, but neither minded taking Jack as well, and Mrs R didn’t object to pitching in. Nevertheless, Emily was determined, and you just didn’t mess with a Gilmore woman when she set her mind to something.

Jess had dutifully dropped his son off at the house in Hartford, complete with various toys and supplies, before returning to Rory and baby Victoria at the hospital. They should be coming home today and the whole process of getting them settled at the house would be easier without a two year old at his heels. As much as Jess adored his son, it helped that someone else was volunteering to watch him just for a few hours, and he figured even Emily and Richard would be okay with a little kid for that long.

“Richard!” called Emily as she led Jack by the hand into the living room. “Come see who’s here!”

“Emily, I was... Oh,” he reacted with surprise and a wide smile. “Well, hello, young man,” he said, sitting down on the couch and reaching out to Jack. “How very nice to see you.”

“High five!” the little boy declared, raising his arm.

Richard wasn’t really a fan of the gesture but went with it anyway. Jack was young yet and there was quite enough drama going on in his life to bother with trying to explain how high fives were just not the done thing in polite society.

“Oh, Jack, you and I are going to have such fun today,” said Emily as she sat down beside Richard. “We can... Well, now let’s see what we have in this bag,” she said, looking through the duffel Jess had handed over alongside his son. “We have colouring books, stickers, and... well, what on earth is this?” she asked with a frown.

Richard took the plastic item from his wife’s hands and stared hard at it.

“I do believe it’s a robot... and also a dinosaur,” he shook his head. “Well, that is quite the invention,” he declared, startling when Jack reached to take the toy from him.

“Pwease!” he urged his great grandfather to hand it over and so Richard did so. “Ta,” Jack smiled, playing happily with his toy, making it walk across the carpet whilst he made a growling sound for the creature’s voice.

“I’m sure that’s not a suitable toy for a two year old,” muttered Emily, going through the rest of the contents of Jack’s bag. “And this is the kind of food they let him eat?” she asked Richard with apparent shock, pulling out a bag of corn snacks in the shape of spaceships.

“Snack!” cried Jack happily. “Pwease? Pwease snacks?” he tried to reach for them.

Emily looked pained.

“I could get you a nice healthy snack,” she tried. “I could have the maid cut up an apple or some carrot sticks. Wouldn’t that be nice, Jack? A nice yummy snack that’s good for you?”

“Snack!” he wailed, reaching as high as he could for the prize in Emily’s hand. “Pwease!!” he tried again, falling on his butt with a bump from all the effort.

Emily opened up the bag fast and handed it over.

“Okay, alright,” she gave in. “Have your poisonous snack,” she muttered. “But I will be having words with Rory about this later,” she told Richard firmly.

Her husband wasn’t listening at all, he had another of Jack’s Robosaurs in his hands, trying to work out how the whole thing changed from one being to the other and finding the mechanics of it fascinating. Emily wondered at the amount of concentration Richard was putting into the toy, and then she glanced at Jack as he munched down on his snacks. One of the pieces was dutifully pulled from his mouth when he caught Great Grandma staring and he held one soggy spaceship out to her.

“Share?” he offered.

Emily wrinkled her nose but forced a smile none the less.

“No, thank you," she said politely.

Jack shrugged his little shoulders and returned the snack to his mouth, wiping his messy hand on the expensive rug. Emily winced and shuddered, but didn’t say a word. She had forgotten quite how many bodily fluids and such were involved with small children, and how they had scant respect for antiquities or expensive furnishings. Still, this was her great grandson, Rory’s little boy. It didn’t matter what mess he made or what trouble he caused, she loved him implicitly. Goodness knows, Jack had been through enough the last couple of days, they all had. Coming so close to losing Rory during the birth of Victoria, it certainly put life into perspective for everyone.

“Well, what’s a little mess anyway?” she said to Jack who grinned widely, showing all the corn stuck in his baby teeth. “Sometimes making a mess can be fun, I guess.”

The idea that came to mind then surprised even Emily, and yet she couldn’t quite resist going through with it.

“Carlotta!” she called to the maid so loudly that both Richard and Jack physically jumped. “I need several old newspapers and some rubber gloves,” she declared.

The maid looked confused but nodded her head and went off to find the things she was asked for. Never question Emily Gilmore, that she had learnt very quickly and was how she had lasted this long at the house. Still, she couldn’t imagine what plans her boss had, unless Mrs Gilmore thought a baby could be house-broken like a puppy? Now there was a disturbing thought.

* * *

Jess pulled the car up outside the Gilmore mansion and let out a long breath. Somehow coming here always felt like he was going into battle. It wasn’t quite so bad when he was with Rory - she and Jack sure did deflect a lot of attention off him - but now Jess was here alone to pick up his son, with no clue what might have happened in the last six hours, during which his kid had been alone with the great grandparents.

It was a tough call as to whether Jack would have run circles around Emily and Richard, or whether they would have him dressed up like a little prince, teaching him how to drink tea from his sippy cup, with his little fingers raised. Jess hadn’t thought about it much when he dropped Jack off at the house. His mind was otherwise occupied with getting back to Rory and Victoria, getting them home safe and settled, which he had now done. Coming back to pick the kid up, his brain was running wild with scenarios and none of them good.

“Let’s just do this,” he said to himself as he alighted from the car and ran a hand back through his hair.

Walking up to the door, he rang the bell and stepped back to wait. He expected the maid to open the door and got a real surprise when it was Emily herself. The first surprise was that she was smiling. Not that overly polite tight smile that she usually used for Jess, the same one that was as fake as anything he had ever seen. This was a full-on beaming grin of genuine joy. Above and beyond that, Jess was confused by the marks on Emily’s face, the multi-coloured blotches of colour that marred her skin and continued on down the front of the frilly apron that covered her clothes. One hand was smeared with something purple, the other primarily green, and there were no shoes on her feet at all.

“Jess. You’re early,” she declared on seeing him. “Or is it later than I think it is?” she checked, looking to her wrist. “Oh, I took off my watch... Richard!” she called then, disappearing from the doorway. “Richard, Jess is here!”

Jess blinked hard twice and then followed Emily inside, closing the door behind him. He continued on into the dining room and was even more shocked by the sight he found in there. The entire table and parts of the floor were covered in newspaper, and much of that was splattered with multi-coloured paint. Amongst the devastation, Emily had found a cloth and was wiping her hands now, still yelling for Richard to bring Jack down already.

“So, you guys have fun?” asked Jess, feeling like he must have stumbled into a parallel universe or something.

“Oh, immense fun!” Emily grinned. 

“And without the assistance of LSD, right?” Jess checked, perhaps a little too seriously since she looked confused by the question.

Richard came down the stairs and rushed into the room before another word was spoken. Jack cheered at the sight of his father and immediately reached out in the hopes of being handed over. Jess easily took the little boy from Richard and hugged him close.

“Hey, buddy,” he greeted him, kissing his damp hair.

Clearly the kid had been bathed since he was also spotless and wearing the extra outfit Jess had packed into his bag. Richard was just now rolling down his shirt-sleeves, so obviously he had been on clean up duty.

“You been having a good time, huh?” Jess asked Jack.

“Painting!” he declared happily. “Gran paint... fingers paint!” he gestured with his hands towards the table and clapped happily as Jess peered down at the pieces of paper on the newspaper-covered surfaces.

Hand prints, rainbows and random designs looked back at him, the handiwork of not just at two year old but adults that were a little more successful at achieving proper shapes too. Jess was astounded. He really never expected the great grandparents to be this much fun or that they would ever want to make such a mess. It was pretty cool though, that even the great Emily Gilmore could be convinced to go nuts when properly motivated.

“Thanks for this,” he told her then. “Seriously, the kid needed some fun after the last couple of days.”

“Well, we were more than happy to provide it,” said Richard. “Were we not, Emily?”

“Oh, yes,” she sighed happily, sitting down in the chair with a bump. “I’m exhausted from trying to keep up with all Jack’s energy, but it has been wonderful. I’m sure I never felt so happy, not since... Well, I’m sure I haven’t done anything like this since Lorelai was a baby,” she smiled nostalgically, feeling silly when tears came to her eyes.

They never got this with Rory, Jess realised. Of course he knew the stories, because Lorelai and Rory had both explained to him. The grandparents weren’t in Rory’s life when she was little. She was sixteen before they had any kind of regular contact, and that meant they missed out on a great deal. As much as coming here never thrilled Jess, he vowed in that moment to make more of an effort to ensure Richard and Emily got to spend time with Jack, and with Victoria too later.

“C’mon, kid,” he said then, snapping out of a daze. “Let’s take you home to Momma. Rory’s really missing him,” he told Emily who nodded in understanding.

“Please tell her... Tell her we love her very much, and that we’d love to come and see her and the baby as soon as possible,” she smiled.

“You’re always welcome,” said Jess, returning the look.

“Thank you, Jess.”

It was maybe the first time they exchanged pleasantries and really meant them from the bottom of their hearts. Richard had disappeared to the living room without anyone noticing and returned now with Jack’s bag in hand. He was stuffing the final Robosaur back into it.

“Wonderful toys they make for children these days,” he declared. “Truly remarkable.”

“Thanks,” said Jess, taking the bag and throwing it over his shoulder. “Seriously though, thanks for taking care of him today, it helped a lot.”

“It is always our pleasure,” said Richard, patting him on the arm. “You just make sure you take care of that little family of yours.”

“Always,” Jess promised. “We’ll see you soon,” he added and then made to leave.

“Bye-bye!” Jack called, waving to his great grandparents over Jess’ shoulder.

“Goodbye, Jack. See you again soon!” Emily called, as she and Richard waved right back to the little boy.

She looked around the devastation of her dining room a moment then, before her eyes settled on one of the paintings on the table. She picked it up by the corner and stared at the rainbow smeared across the page. A smile spread across her lips as Richard’s arm slid around her shoulders.

“We’re very lucky,” she told him. “You know that don’t you?”

“Yes. Indeed, I do,” he agreed, leaning down to kiss her cheek.

When he pulled back, Emily realised Richard had a splodge of paint right on the end of his nose, and she laughed.


	18. Important Announcement - 12th August 2006

“And Lorelai definitely told you to bring me to this thing?” asked Jess as he and Rory got out of the car.

“She said she needed to see me, you, and Jack,” his wife replied, unstrapping their son from the car seat. “C’mon, baby,” she said to him as she lifted Jack into her arms. “Let’s go see what Grandma wants to tell us.”

“What I don’t get is why we’re meeting her in the town square and not at your house,” said Jess as they walked down the street. “She’s not going to tell us she burned down the Crap Shack or something, is she?”

“I highly doubt it,” Rory rolled her eyes. “At least, I hope not,” she said then, looking worried.

“I was kidding!” said Jess reassuringly, his arm around her shoulders. “I know Lorelai would never turn on the stove unsupervised so it's highly unlikely she started a fire.”

“That is true, but it is weird that she wouldn’t tell me on the phone what was up, and that we’re meeting in public,” said Rory as they turned the corner, then she gasped.

It seemed whatever kind of announcement Lorelai was making, it was not just for the ears of her closest family. If there was one person in the square right now, then there were a hundred. Jess was put in mind of one of Taylor’s town meetings and an involuntary shudder ran through his whole body. He had gotten used to the townsfolk over his time here, especially since he came back with a pregnant Rory eighteen months ago. Still, it never thrilled him to be amongst all of these people. That was one thing he and Luke definitely had a common.

“Speaking of whom,” said Jess to himself as he spotted his uncle towards the back of the gathered crowd. “Hey,” he greeted him.

Luke turned around sharply and shook his head.

“You too, huh?” he checked. “Well, that makes sense.”

“Does it?” asked Rory. “Right now, I’m not sure any of this makes sense.”

“All I know is Lorelai told me to be in the town square at exactly twelve o’clock. Never mind the fact we’re right in the middle of the lunch rush and she also summoned Lane, Zach, and Caesar. I had to close up the diner for this, and now I find the whole town out here to meet my wife? What the hell is going on?”

“I wish we knew, sweetheart,” said Miss Patty, appearing at his side. “I just made my way through this entire crowd to get to the few people that ought to know why we’re here, but I guess it was all in vain!”

“Half the town has to be out here,” said Jess, looking around.

“All the people that matter,” Miss Patty agreed. “I’ve seen Babette with Maury, but no East Side Tilly, so whatever we’re about to find out, we’re going to beat that woman to it for once!” she grinned.

“I’m kinda worried about Mom,” said Rory then, bouncing Jack in her arms when he fussed some. “I mean, what could she possibly want to announce to half the town like this? And without telling me or Luke first?”

“Beats me,” shrugged Jess. “Second guessing your mother is like trying to translate Wookie.”

“Star Wars?” said Luke, looking confused. “Really?” 

“I’m sorry, did I just offend your Trekkie sensibilities?” replied Jess smartly.

Rory couldn’t help but smile as both guys gave in and turned back towards the gathered crowd. On the far side, they could see Sookie and Jackson with Davey in tow and Mrs R beside them. Taylor was present too, as well as Andrew, Gypsy, Mrs Kim, plus Lane, Zach, and even Brian and Gil. Everybody who was anybody seemed to be here, and yet the person who had gathered them all was nowhere to be seen.

A slightly out-of-synch beeping emitted from various watches around the group and Rory looked at Jess as he checked his own timepiece.

“Twelve o’clock noon,” he confirmed. “Guess it’s show time.”

“Doubtful,” said Rory with a knowing look. "Whatever this is, my mom organised it. Timing has never been her strongest suit.”

Rory’s eyes were the widest in the place when she was suddenly proven wrong. The general muttering of the crowd changed pitch as Lorelai appeared, climbing the steps of the gazebo to stand that bit higher than everybody else. Luke automatically headed around the edge of the assembled crowd to get to his wife. Rory followed without even thinking about it. Jess sighed and decided he probably ought to go forth as well.

They arrived at the foot of the steps, looking up at Lorelai who barely acknowledged them at first, instead addressing the whole crowd.

“Hey, everybody!” she yelled so they would all hear. “Uh, okay, so thank you all for coming along to this impromptu meeting...”

“Impromptu is the word, missy!” yelled Taylor from somewhere in the middle of the group. “I know for a fact you don’t have a permit for this happy little gathering!”

“Can it, Taylor!” Luke and Jess told him angrily, and completely as one, before all attention went back to Lorelai.

“Thanks, guys,” she said, glancing down at her husband and son-in-law both. “I, err... Well, I should probably actually start this whole thing with an apology to my nearest and dearest,” she said then, looking from Luke to Rory and back. “See, the thing of it is, I had this news I wanted to share. First off, I thought I better tell Rory and then I thought maybe it should be Luke that heard it first. I really couldn’t decide who was the right person to go to first and then I felt bad for not knowing. I thought whichever one I told would automatically tell Jess or each other or they would all end up telling each other so I wouldn’t get to do it,” she rambled, as a Gilmore girl was wont to do. “Anyway, I figured, whoever I tell out of any of you, a whole bunch of you would find out from each other without me getting to do the telling, and given that it’s my news, I really wanted to give it to all of you myself,” she went on. “It made sense in my head to just gather all the most important people together and tell   
them all at once. The problem was...” she explained, a hand to her aching forehead now even as she laughed. “See, the problem was that I started with a pretty short list of important people, but then it just grew and grew and grew, because hey, all of you people are important.”

A general ‘aaaw’ went through the crowd and Lorelai wasn’t ready for the tears that welled in her eyes when she heard it. Still, she pressed on. She had come this far and was kind of obliged to continue.

“See, when I moved to Stars Hollow, there was just me and this little bundle called Rory. We didn’t really have anybody, no family or anything, not that we could turn to then. Each of you here, in some way or other, became a part of a family that we all built together. I have more brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, and adopted kids than I could ever have imagined in this town. It’s not just home, it's my entire life. You people are everything to me,” she cried, not realising she was doing it until she tasted salt from the happy tears streaming down her face. “And so, as ridiculous as it now seems to be stood up here talking to you all like we’re on the front lawn of the White House, I want you all to share in my news all together. I want everybody here to know, that there’s going to be a new member of the Stars Hollow family. I’m pregnant!”

The last two words were spoken loudly enough for all to hear, and yet she addressed them primarily to Luke right there at the bottom of the steps. At least that was where he was when she started speaking. Before she had hardly finished, he was up in the gazebo with his arms around her, a happy kind of shock written all over his face.

“Pregnant?” he echoed, even as the crowd below cheered and applauded.

“Pregnant,” she repeated, meeting his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Luke. I should’ve done this differently, but I-”

Her words were cut off by his lips on hers, taking her breath away completely. Lorelai didn’t care at all, just happily kissed him back, her arms wrapping as tight around Luke as his were around her.

When they parted moments later, Luke looked down at her body, his brain still working overtime on the fact there was a baby in there, or at least some kind of life that would be a baby in a few months’ time.

“We’re having a kid,” he said with a kind of wonder as he looked up again at Lorelai.

“Yup,” she confirmed.

There may have been another kiss if Rory hadn’t intervened. She couldn’t wait to hug her mother and congratulate her on her pregnancy. Jess hovered awkwardly beside her, Jack now in his arms to free up Rory for hugging her mom and Luke. He offered congratulations in a short, non-touching Jess way that was just fine with everybody present. Besides, there was a whole lot of other people, quite literally climbing over each other to come tell Lorelai and Luke how happy they were for them.

Maybe Lorelai could’ve done this differently, in a more subtle way, but then she wouldn’t be Lorelai, and this wouldn’t be Stars Hollow. Honestly, this was probably the most perfect way possible for a favourite daughter of the town to announce such a happy event.

“Had to go one better than my speech at the town meeting, huh?” said Rory, recalling the day when she had shocked everybody by showing up pregnant and expressing her love for Jess to all the astonished townsfolk.

“You ever get pregnant again, we’ll rent a plane and sky write it so you can get your edge back, okay, kid?” said Lorelai smartly.

Rory smiled. “Sounds like a plan.”


	19. The Other Woman - 15th April 2006

This was maybe the very last place that Rory wanted to be, but honestly, she didn’t feel like she had a choice. She hadn’t lied to Jess about where she was going, but she hadn’t told him the truth either. It made her feel sick, a lie by omission was still a lie but Rory knew how her husband would react to this meeting. She would tell him after, when she could follow up with the whys and wherefores. Until the conversation was had, she really didn’t know all the information. It seemed she was about to find out.

“Hi,” she said shortly, taking a seat across the cafe table.

“Hey, Rory,” she grinned widely, though it was clearly a strained expression. “Thank you for meeting me like this-”

“I’m not here for you,” snapped Rory, immediately moderating her tone when she saw Liz flinch. “Luke asked me to come, and he’s done a lot for me so, here I am.”

This was never going to go smoothly. Rory had met her mother-in-law on precisely one occasion before now and they had barely exchanged more than a half dozen words. It wasn’t like Rory to judge people she didn’t know without a fair hearing, but she knew what Jess had suffered because of Liz. It made her want to walk away from this table and never come back, but she had promised Luke she would hear his sister out, so Rory was compelled to stay. Still, it was clear she wasn’t happy, arms folded across her chest and expression sour.

“Well, thanks anyway,” said Liz, trying to be cheerful. “How’s Jess?”

“He’s good,” said Rory, nodding once.

“And Jack?”

“He’s good too,” she admitted, a smile curving Rory’s lips that she couldn’t help as she spoke of her darling son. “Walking, talking...” she continued, pulling out her cell and hunting down a video she was so proud of. “Here,” she said as she handed it off to Liz.

“Aaaw!” she reacted like any proud grandmother should, which seemed odd when she barely knew Jack or even Rory. “He’s precious. I know he has your eyes and everything, but I look at him and... and I go back twenty years in a flash,” said Liz, smile fading, eyes welling.

Rory swallowed hard. “He does look a lot like Jess.”

This meeting was going to be a whole lot tougher than she thought, Rory realised, as she took back her cell from Liz, smiling a moment at the now still image of her son before putting it back in her pocket. It was easy to dislike Liz when she was remembering how badly Jess had suffered because of her. It was tougher when she was being a doting grandma type, remembering her own son as a baby with wonder and sadness at the same time.

“Does my boy know you’re here?”

“No,” said Rory, shaking her head, fingernail making patterns on the edge of the saucer in front of her. “I will tell him, but after. I wanted to know what I was telling him first. Why am I here, Liz?”

“Okay, er, wow,” she said, taking a deep breath and literally bracing herself against the table a moment. “Well, I felt like I needed to talk to you, woman to woman, to apologise for before, for a lot of befores actually,” she explained at last. “Rory, I know Jess must’ve told you a lot of awful stories about me and what a bad mother I was. I’m not going to sit here and deny any of it, I... I screwed up, Rory. I really did,” she said sadly.

Rory didn’t want to feel sorry for Liz. In her mind, she just didn’t deserve it. Sure, she suffered when Jimmy left, and that wasn’t her fault, but the things that came after, they were her own doing. The string of men that traipsed through her life, often abusing Jess or simply acting as a distraction so Liz’s son got no attention at all. The drinking, the drugs, the general lack of support and even love for a little boy when he needed it most. It made Rory’s blood boil to think of it, especially now she had a son of her own. She couldn’t imagine putting anything before Jack, or before Jess for that matter. Love meant putting other people first, something Liz just didn’t seem to understand.

“I know this,” she ground out. “I know everything you did and how much it hurt Jess, and Luke for that matter.”

“Yeah,” Liz nodded her agreement, “but what you probably don’t know is how much I regret it,” she said sadly, hand reaching across the table to Rory’s own, but her target was retracted before she made the connection. “Rory, I swear, time goes by and I get to thinking about the way my life has turned out. Me and T.J. are so happy now, and... and we’re about to make a real family,” she said, both hands now moving back to her own body, landing on her belly.

Rory frowned at the implication. “You’re pregnant?”

“Eight weeks,” Liz smiled and nodded. “So it’s a little early to be telling anybody, but I have to, Rory. You know what it’s like. To be pregnant, I mean. It makes you look at life differently, makes you think about where you’ve been and where you’re headed...”

“It does.”

“Rory, I know where I’m headed now, or where I want to be headed, at least,” Liz explained, hoping against hope that words would be enough for now, because they were simply all she had. “I want to come back to Stars Hollow, but I know that with things the way they are right now, that wouldn’t be so easy.”

Rory’s head was spinning with one revelation after another. Her mother-in-law was pregnant; the ever-useless Liz was expecting to bring another child into the world in around seven months from now. That was likely to blow Jess’ mind. Then there was the news she wanted to come home to Stars Hollow, living nearby, being a part of their daily routines. Rory wasn’t sure she wanted that, and was damn sure Jess wouldn’t, though it seemed to be Liz’s intention to have her agree to such a plan.

“I can’t make Jess like this idea, if that’s what you’re asking me,” she said definitely, unwilling to risk her own relationship by making such an unpopular suggestion to her husband. “I can’t, I won’t try.”

“I’m not asking you to campaign on my behalf, Rory,” Liz assured her. “I’m just... I don’t know, I guess I just wanted you to make the first move for me? Seeing me again, it might be too much for Jess to handle, what with the pregnancy news and me and T.J. thinking of moving back. I was thinking, if you told him I was around, kind of floated the idea out there so he’s not so shocked?” she tried.

“You want me to be a scouting party for you to approach your own son?” asked Rory. “That’s... Well, probably not the weirdest thing I heard in this town,” she considered, unsure what else to say.

“That I believe,” said Liz with a chuckle, recalling the general wackiness of the Hollow with amusement and fondness both. “Mostly, I wanted to talk to you first because... because I really want us to be friends, Rory. I wanted you to hear me out, to see how happy and settled I am now,” she explained then. “You got every reason in the world to hate me, sweetheart, and I understand that, but you’re hating the old me, not the new me. New Liz is... I’m trying so hard, Rory. I want to be the mother I should’ve been before. A good wife, a good mom, a better person. I just need somebody to give me a chance to prove that I can.”

Though she was still trying to smile through her speech, it was clear her expression was ultimately sad in nature. Rory had got pretty good at reading people over the years, and there was no question in her mind that Liz really did mean what she said. Whether or not she would achieve her goal in being this better person she strived to be, Rory couldn’t say for sure. She doubted even Liz could do that. The fact she was willing to try, to accept her faults and apologise for all she had done, it was a good start.

“Okay,” said Rory at length. “I’ll talk to Jess, I’ll tell him we met today and... and I’ll let him know your news, about the baby and your plans to move back. I can’t promise he’ll be happy about it, that he’ll want to see you or anything, but I’ll try,” she assured Liz. “Because I do believe you want to do better this time around,” she said with a brief glance at Liz’s middle.

“I sure do,” she nodded vigorously, hands back to her stomach though it showed no sign of change yet. “This baby is going to be the making of me. Believe me, I know Jess should’ve been, but I can’t go back and make that situation better. I can only try my best not to let it happen all over again.”

Rory nodded that she agreed, musing on something else now that was very nearly funny. A smile came to her lips unbidden and she knew she was going to have to explain why.

“I was just thinking, Jack’s uncle or aunt is going to be more than eighteen months younger than him.”

Liz laughed loudly at that. “Yeah, I realised that. Tried to explain it to T.J. and he just couldn’t get it. Poor guy,” she shook her head, still chuckling. “Numbers aren’t his strong point, but you should see what that man can do with an Etch-A-Sketch!”

“That’s... great,” said Rory awkwardly.

It was not going to be easy helping to broker peace between Liz and Jess, and she didn’t relish trying. At the same time, reuniting family members might be nice. Jack didn’t exactly need another grandmother, but he ought to know her if he could. If Liz was serious about sticking around, trying to make up for the past somehow, and Rory believed she was, then it would be selfish and heartless not to give her the chance. Bridges could be mended sometimes, if people really wanted to fix them. Rory was determined to give it her best, for Jess’ sake more than anyone else. She loved him that much.


	20. Two by Two by Two - 23rd March 2006

It was almost midnight and Jess was very deliberately awake. He would have expected Rory not to be sleeping right now either, but they kind of had a big day and he could certainly understand her being tired. It had come to light that they were expecting another baby. Sure, Rory was only a few weeks into her pregnancy at most, but before this year was through, they would have two kids. Jess would be a father for a second time. Quite honestly, he wasn’t so sure he was used to being one child’s Daddy yet.

Jack was amazing though. Jess didn’t think he could ever love anyone as much as he loved Rory, and then their son had come into the picture, two years ago to the day.

Jess thought about waking her. After all, last year, Rory had been very insistent about starting a tradition with Jack and keeping it going every year. It had started with Lorelai going into Rory’s room every birthday morning at the very moment she was born and relating the story of her birth. Rory wanted to do the same thing with their son, and so Jack had the tale of his coming into the world told to him within a minute of his turning one year old.

Rory had suggested that night, after they got back into bed, that maybe when Jack turned two, Jess could tell his side of the birth story. He had taken the comment as something and nothing, not really making a plan based on it. Now it seemed like a great idea to get up and go do this thing. He pondered on waking Rory for a minute longer and then decided against. She had gone through a roller-coaster of emotions already today over her new pregnancy, and tomorrow was going to be pretty crazy with all the birthday celebrations for Jack. Jess figured Rory would be fine, even grateful, with being allowed to sleep on.

Moving quickly and quietly out of the bed, Jess padded along to Jack’s room without a sound. He opened the door and found the kid was already wide awake, standing up in his crib with a grin on his face, just as if he had been expecting company.

“Hey, kid,” his father greeted him in a whisper, coming further into the room and lifting Jack up out of his crib. “We’re gonna have to think about getting you a real bed soon, huh?”

Jack made some sort of garbled reply and clung to Jess. He was tired it seemed, and yet determined to be awake for whatever reason. There was no telling the reason with this kid. He was as unpredictable as his mother, that was for sure, and the only person in the world Jess could love as much as he loved Rory.

“You know what day today is, little man?” he asked Jack then.

“Day... Birthday?” he asked sleepily, rubbing his eyes.

“That’s right, it’s your birthday,” said Jess, kissing his head as it dropped onto his shoulder. “Today’s the day you are two years old. For you, that’s a big deal, but for me and your mom, it seems like just two minutes ago that you were born,” he sighed, rocking his son in his arms as he recalled the day so clearly. “Y’know, it’s not cool for guys to be scared. Us men, we’re supposed to be tough, but when we had to take your mom to the hospital with you and she was.. well, she was going through a lot,” he said, realising that talk of pain and screaming was only likely to upset Jack. “I was terrified something was going to go wrong. That your mom was going to... That something was going to go wrong,” he repeated so softly it would be amazing if even Jack heard.

Jess bit his lip and took a deep breath. He wasn’t really the type to cry, but there were times when it inevitably happened. Mostly he was alone when the moment overtook him. Right now, there was only Jack to bear witness if he broke down, and even then the kid was mostly asleep in his arms. At least, he thought it was just the two of them until the door seemed to inch open of its own accord.

“Hey,” said Rory in a whisper.

“Hey,” Jess replied though there was a shake in his voice even speaking just the one word. Swallowing hard, he continued. “I didn’t think you’d want me to wake you. Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she smiled, pushing her hair off her face as she shuffled further into the room. “Hey, Jack. Happy birthday, baby,” she told her son, a hand at his back.

“Momma?” he mumbled, lifting his head.

“Yeah, Momma’s here. Daddy too,” she told him happily. “How’s my little two year old man?”

The great big yawn that came out of Jack right then proved he was much more tired than he would like to be. Jess wasted no time in putting his son back in his bed and pulling the covers up over him.

“Go ahead and sleep, kid,” he urged him. “There’s plenty of time to celebrate later.”

Rory moved up close next to Jess until his arm went automatically around her shoulders and pulled her to him. They stood there a while, both just looking down on their son who they couldn’t love more.

“You were telling him the birth story, weren't you?” 

“Yeah,” Jess admitted without looking at Rory yet. “I didn’t get too far. Honestly, I didn't know what to say. Just thinking about you that night, how tough it was on you and I felt so useless-”

“You were not useless,” said Rory sharply, immediately regretting her volume when Jack squirmed in his crib.

She took hold of Jess’ hand then and led him from Jack’s room to their own. Back in their own bed, she could say all that she wanted to, whether Jess wanted to hear it or not.

“That night, I was terrified, Jess. I wanted our baby and I knew it was my job to bring him into the world, but I’m not going to lie, the pain was bad and I was scared. What got me through it was you,” she told him, words she had spoken before but somehow he never quite managed to believe it.

“You’d have coped without me.” He shook his head. “In my absence, Lorelai was on hand, Luke, your grandparents.”

“You don’t have to tell me how blessed I am with people who love me, I know,” Rory assured him. “But Jess, I didn’t want any of those people with me then. I wanted you. I always want you,” she reminded him, her hands holding his face, making him look at her when he tried to turn away. “Why is that still so hard for you to understand sometimes?” she asked him desperately. “I love you, you dope!”

“Oh, I’m a dope now?” he checked with a smirk that came naturally.

“Sometimes, yes,” she confirmed very seriously. “But it’s okay, because that’s part of you, and I love all of you,” she promised, moving in closer and kissing his lips. “I also love that you were even trying to keep up the tradition I started last year,” she smiled widely.

“You told your story last year, so I tried to tell mine,” he shrugged. “Wasn’t quite so easy from my side.”

“It’s fine” Rory assured him. “It’s the thought that counts, and as awful as it probably sounds to you, I had no idea what you went through that day.”

“Why would you? You had enough to deal with,” he reminded her, pulling her comfortably into his embrace. “And you were amazing. You always are. When this baby comes, at least we’ll know what to expect this time around.”

“Two babies,” said Rory thoughtfully, her head on his chest. “We can handle it, right?”

“Of course we can,” Jess promised, kissing her hair. “Besides, by the time this kid comes along, Jack will be a little older, and we’ve got an entire town backing us up no matter what. We’ll be just fine.”

“Yeah,” Rory agreed sleepily. “I hope Jack likes the idea of having a little brother or sister, but I’m glad we decided not to tell him or anybody else yet. Tomorrow is his day, I don’t want to make any announcements until after.”

“And this is why you’re the best mom in the world,” said Jess softly.

Rory smiled at his sweet words but didn’t have the energy to answer. She was so tired and fell asleep again within a minute. Jess lay awake a while longer, fingers absently running through Rory’s hair as he thought about what came before and what was yet to come. It was a scary time when Jack was born, but it was also the most amazing moment of his life to see his son brought into the world.

Now they were headed into another adventure, another member of their crazy family. There really wasn’t room in the apartment for a second kid. As it was they had kind of conjured a separate room for Jack by turning what should really be an oversized storage closet into a little room. He already needed more space, and the new baby would take up more. They were really only in New Haven in the first place so Rory could go to Yale more easily. Everybody who loved them, their jobs, their world was in Stars Hollow.

“Hey, Ror,” said Jess, nudging her awake.

“Hmm,” she replied, still at least half-asleep. “What?”

“I was just thinking... I know you love this apartment, and we really made it a home, but what do you think about maybe moving back to Stars Hollow before this baby comes along?”

Rory’s eyes were open wide in a second as she lifted her head and stared at him. Jess could not be serious, she was sure, and yet he sure didn’t look as if he were kidding.

“Could we?”

“Why not?” he shrugged easily at her question. “Between what the diner makes and what we earn from working, even with another kid on the way, I think we could maybe put a down payment on one of the smaller houses in town. Property prices aren’t exactly sky high in the Hollow, we need the space, and we’d be closer to Luke and Lorelai...”

That was as far as Jess got in painting the pretty picture of living in Stars Hollow before Rory flung herself on top of him, her lips pressed firmly against his own. Jess hadn’t had a chance to breathe before the assault of her kiss, not that he was about to complain, but he came out of it gasping.

“I’m guessing you like the idea,” he said when he could finally speak.

“I love it!” Rory enthused. “And I love you,” she repeated, punctuating each word with a kiss to his face. “Oh, Jess! I have loved living here and it has been a home, kind of, but not really. It always felt like... like we were just waiting to go back to our real home.”

“Agreed,” said Jess with a lop-sided smile. “As much as I hate to admit it, that crack-pot town is where we belong.”

“Amen!” said Rory happily, settling down comfortably into his arms again.

Jess kissed the top of her head and let his eyes fall shut. Now they were both happy with where the future was headed, they could afford to sleep a little while.


	21. Like Mother, Like Daughter - 5th June 2014

There were times when Rory thought this day would never come. Honestly, even when she was picturing such an occasion, it was nothing like this. Today was the day of her graduation ceremony, when she would receive her diploma, move the tassel on her hat from one side to the other, and officially have earnt her degree in journalism. Perhaps she was a little sad that this wasn’t Yale, that she hadn’t completed the four years she intended right out of high school, but in the end, none of that really mattered. She had achieved her goal, and she had not had to sacrifice the chance to see her son, or her daughter, go through all the important early stages of life to do it.

“Are you okay?” asked the girl next to her.

“Yeah, I think so.” Rory smiled, though her hand shook the moment she reached for her lip gloss to reapply. “This is crazy. How can I be so nervous about being handed a diploma? I already did it in high school. Although, that was quite a while ago now,” she sighed.

“You’re not that old!” Cindy rolled her eyes.

“In the death throes of my twenties,” said Rory with a smile at the over-dramatic phrasing. “So my friend Paris keeps on telling me anyway, but that’s good. I was determined to have this done before I was thirty. That became the new goal, and at least I stuck to it.”

She focused on her compact mirror and checked her hair and make-up, missing the look on Cindy’s face. Thirty was a long way off for her. She had attended the community college right out of high school, going there part time whilst also working. Somebody had to help pay the rent and all. There was only her and her father, and Rory knew from all that her study buddy had told her that Daddy Dearest liked the bottle a lot more than work or family. It meant that both she and Rory struggled in their own ways; Cindy with being so young and coping essentially alone with a dad that so depended on her, and Rory with being a young mother of two. Sure, she was lucky enough to have a loving and supportive husband, a mother and step-father that couldn’t be more helpful, and a huge extended family to always be there when she needed them. Still, balancing priorities never did come easy.

“I can’t imagine being thirty,” said Cindy, shaking her head. “But here’s hoping when I get there, I’ll be as cool as you, Ror.”

“Cindy!” She shook her head, looking to her friend. “I’m not so great.”

“Hey, you know you are,” Cindy countered. “Actually, I think we’ve both done pretty good to get this far.”

“That I’ll agree to, and you are going to go on to do great things, Cindy. I know you are,” she smiled, even as tears filled her eyes.

They had promised to keep in touch after college was done, and yet Rory had a horrible feeling she would be seeing very little of Cindy after today. She was capable of great things, that much was true. Cindy was very smart, both in terms of intelligence and having a tendency towards the street-wise, despite where she had been raised. She had so much potential, but with her family situation, Rory somehow doubted she would be able to reach it any time soon.

“You’re the best, Ror,” said Cindy, reaching to hug her faithful study partner that she was so going to miss. “I, er... I honestly don’t think I could’ve gotten through the last couple of years without you.”

“Ditto,” said Rory definitely as they parted, both with watering eyes and wide smiles on their faces. “Oh, this is just terrible!” she exclaimed, checking herself in the mirror again. “We cannot go out there looking like this!”

They both fixed their make up just in time as the call came to head to the hall where family and friends were waiting. Rory couldn’t keep the grin off her face as she took her seat on stage. There in the front row was her mom and Luke, beside them Billy, Jack, and Tori, and there on the end was Jess. Rory felt teary all over again as both her mother and her kids waved wildly and her husband shot her a smile that said everything. They were all so proud of her, and honestly, Rory was proud too. She had worked hard and she was very glad to be here right now.

Silence fell over the hall as the guest speaker took the stage. The speech was long and boring, but Rory wouldn’t have been listening in any case. As her eyes scanned the crowd she was sad to see that Cindy’s father hadn’t made it. She had nobody else, just the one relative who ought to care, and he was probably passed out drunk at home, not even realising why today was important. Though Rory was sad for her friend, it was hard to keep from smiling for her own sake, especially when she realised that more than just her closest family members had turned out for today’s main event. There were only so many seats, she knew not everybody could be accommodated by the small hall, and yet stuffed in at the back amongst the ‘standing room only’ were her grandparents, Mrs R, The Bellevilles, and Lane. Rory was so distracted she didn’t know the speaker was done talking until the polite applause began and she joined in belatedly, feeling dazed.

The ceremony proper started then, with the first row of graduates rising to file across the stage and receive their diplomas. Letters A through F were trailing by when suddenly there was a commotion beyond the main doors. All eyes shifted to see what was happening, and Rory gasped in shock when she realised the loud voice out in the hall was way too familiar.

“I don’t care about your stupid small town rules, bucko! My best friend is graduating today, and I’m not missing this moment for anybody. I studied krav maga, y’know?!”

A familiar figure burst into the hall and Rory had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.

“Aunt Paris!” yelled Tori without a moment’s pause and the biggest grin on her face.

Jack was quick to greet her just the same.

“Hey, kids!” she replied with a smile, moving to join them. 

Jess pulled Tori onto his lap to make space, and Paris slipped in between him and Jack, saying ‘hi’ to Lorelai and Luke too. It didn’t phase her at all that she had stopped the ceremony and startled the whole room with her entrance.

Paris looked up to the stage then and realised things were still halted.

“Proceed,” she instructed the startled man with a diploma in one hand and a graduate's own fingers still grasped in the other - he did as he was told.

Rory didn’t have time to wonder at the spectacle her friend had made. Her own row got up next, the G through N row, and all filed by to get their diplomas.

“Lorelai Leigh Mariano,” she heard, moving in automatic as the diploma was placed into her hand. “Congratulations, Rory.”

“Thank you,” she smiled, shaking hands and then stepping away to face her family.

Proudly, she moved the tassel from one side of her hat to the other, just as Lorelai had done more than ten years before. Rory met Jess’ eyes, fighting tears when she saw him mouth ‘I love you’. Then she glanced to her mother, seeing Lorelai laughing and crying all at the same time. Rory was so glad she had done this.

* * *

“Mommy! Mom!” her kids yelled together as they ran to Rory.

The ceremony was over and all the chairs were being cleared away. Family and friends were free to congratulate their graduates with hugs and kisses, and that was exactly what Rory’s family wanted to do too. She crouched down to receive the biggest hugs from Jack and Tori, revelling in the feeling of their love and affection.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re here!” she said, holding them tight. “Mommy wouldn’t’ve wanted to graduate without you.”

“Can I have your hat, Mommy?” asked Tori the moment she was released from Rory’s arm.

Her mother laughed at the question.

“It’s not really mine, honey. I have to give it back now the ceremony is over,” she explained. “But I guess you can wear it for a little while,” she sighed when she saw Tori’s fat lip. “Here.”

Rory put the mortar board on Tori’s head and Jack laughed when it fell over his sister’s eyes. Of course, he then immediately moved to help her to see, tipping the hat back on her head a little and trying to balance it. He continued his almost impossible task, whilst Rory got happily distracted by her husband.

“Congratulations, Ms Graduate,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “You know I’m incredibly proud of you, right?”

“I do,” she nodded. “And honestly? Kinda proud of me too,” she smiled.

They managed one brief kiss before Lorelai interrupted, demanding both a hug and photographs of the occasion. Seeing her baby graduate from Harvard had always been the dream, then that had shifted to Yale. She certainly never expected to be back at the community college where she herself had completed business classes so long before, watching Rory get her diploma, but it really didn’t matter.

“I know this wasn’t the plan,” said Rory, sadness showing in her eyes.

“Nope, nuh-uh, I’m not letting you do that “ said Lorelai, shaking her head as she raised Rory’s chin on her finger. “You did good, baby girl. It doesn’t matter to me that you never did Harvard or Yale or whatever. Sure, that would’ve been cool, but look what you have now,” she said, encouraging Rory to look at her kids, her husband, her family as a whole. “You have an amazing life, Rory. Sure, it’s not what we planned way back when, but if you’re happy-”

“I am.”

“Then that is all that ever mattered to me,” Lorelai promised. “I am so, so proud of you, Rory, and not just for graduating. You have become the most amazing woman.”

“Well, I had a pretty good role model.”

They were both crying as they hugged then, and even Luke and Jess seemed to be welling up. Only Paris remained stoic in the face of the emotional moment all else were succumbing to.

“Suck it up, ladies,” she rolled her eyes, though she was smiling as she came over to Rory, clearly not meaning to be so unfeeling. “You did good, Gilmore, but then I always knew you’d get that diploma in the end.”

“Thanks, Paris” said Rory, giving her friend a hug. “But you keep on forgetting, it's Mariano now. Has been for a while,” she reminded her.

“You’ll always be Mary Gilmore to me,” she grinned, unable to help giving in to the old joke.

“I can’t believe you’re here. I thought you’d be way too busy.”

“For you and this moment? Not a chance.”

Just when it seemed that even the great Paris Geller was going to succumb to the emotion of the moment, more congratulators came forward to break it. Rory felt as if she was getting every bit of life hugged out of her, and yet with each embrace she only felt better, happier, stronger. She really had got the most incredible family and the best out of life. No, this wasn’t how she planned for things to be, but she certainly couldn’t complain.

Thinking of how lucky she was made Rory quickly think of those less fortunate. Her eyes scanned the crowd for Cindy but she seemed to be lost in the crush at first. Then finally Rory found her, over by the doors. She was wrapped in the arms of an older man, with a stubbled chin and dressed in a suit that looked as if it had seen better days. Immediately she knew it must be Cindy’s father. In the end, he had come through for her.

“It all works out in the end,” she said softly to herself.

“Hey, Gilmore! Stop daydreaming and get over here!” demanded Paris. “Got to have that traditional picture, right?”

Smiling brightly, Rory put herself in between Lorelai and Luke, preparing to have her photograph snapped by Paris. Just as the button was about to be pressed she yelled; “No, wait! This might be traditional, but...”

Rory shook her head and stepped out from between her mother and step-father. Grabbing the kids she urged them to come with her, placing all three of them in front of Lorelai and Luke, and retrieving her hat from Tori at the same time. Rory positioned Jess and Mrs R beside Lorelai, and Emily and Richard on the other side of Luke. Lane took the initiative, ducking down on the floor with the children, as Sookie and Jackson huddled into the scene as well. Paris backed up further and further in order to get everyone in shot. She almost bowled over a couple behind her and ended up making them feel like they ought to have known better than to be stood where she needed to be. She ended up stood on a chair, a good twenty feet back to make the picture work, but Rory knew it would be perfect. Everybody that mattered most was here on her very special day, and life was good.


	22. Bright Lights, Big City - 15th August 2012

Jess watched the city blocks blur past the window and couldn’t help but smile. It might not be New York, but any city gave him a strange sense of nostalgia whenever he passed through. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his life in Stars Hollow. Honestly, nothing felt more like home than his little house in Connecticut with his young family and all the neighbours and friends around. Jess Mariano never thought for a second he could be so happy with the whole 'wife and kids in a small town' set up, but he did love it. That was home, but the city still made his heart race and the blood pound in his veins. It was a slice of his life that he didn’t mind revisiting once in a while.

When he first started trying to write a book worthy of publishing, Jess hadn’t been sure what to expect. In the end, none of the big publishers showed any interest, but one independant place based here in Philadelphia had come across the manuscript through a friend of a friend and decided that 'The Subsect' could not be allowed to fall by the wayside. They called Jess and he made a trip to the city to discuss getting his manuscript made into a real-life book. That was almost five months ago now, and Jess had been back to Philly a few times to visit with Matt and Chris, iron out details of extra print runs, advertising, and such. Today he was here for another of these meetings, and for the first time, he wasn’t alone.

“Daddy, look!” Tori yelled for the twenty seventh time as she pointed out of the window, but the moment Jess tried to see what she was so eager to show him it was gone, as the cab continued on to Truncheon. “I love Philly!”

“Oh, you do?” asked Jess with a chuckle. “Tor, you’ve barely seen the place yet.”

“I love it!” she declared happily anyway. “It has pretty lights, pretty cars, pretty stores.”

“I get it, you think Philadelphia is pretty,” he nodded, reaching across to grab her little hand in his own. “But Stars Hollow is still prettier. Know why?”

Tori seemed to think very hard about that question before shaking her head ‘no’.

“Because, the prettiest girls come from there, like you and your mom,” said Jess.

“That’s true.” Tori nodded, before going back to staring out of the window.

“Never let it be said that my daughter doesn’t know her own worth,” her father muttered to himself as the car finally reached Truncheon.

The driver pulled up to the kerb. Jess unstrapped Tori from the car seat and lifted her out, placing her on the sidewalk. He kept a tight grip on her hand while reaching for his cash with the other to pay for the ride. With his bag pulled up high on his shoulder, Jess led Tori towards the steps that would take them up to Truncheon’s front door and they climbed up together, hand in hand. At the top, Jess swung Tori up into his arms and hugged her tight.

“Now, you’re going to be a good girl today, right?” he said seriously. “I said you could come along on this business trip because you really, really wanted to, but you do have to behave and do exactly as I say, okay?”

“Okay,” she nodded, raising her hand for a high five.

It was Jack who started it, or rather Jess that had begun it with his son. He taught the kid high five when he was still a baby and it soon became their way of sealing promises or deals. Tori caught on fast. In fact, Jess was pretty sure Jack had taught her it, like some kind of secret handshake type of thing. The Gilmore Elders sure hated it, which was probably why Jess encouraged the kids to keep on doing it. If he was going to have to be a grown up in so many areas of his ife, Jess was at least determined to keep a little rebellious streak going somewhere.

With his free hand, Jess opened up the front door to Truncheon and walked on in. The book store wasn’t exactly busy but there were a few people milling around. Tori immediately tried to get out of Daddy’s grasp, but Jess kept a firm grip, at least at first.

This was not the Hollow, not every person Tori would come across was a friendly neighbour or someone she knew as aunt or uncle. As much as Jess had loved running free as a child and had mostly been allowed to do so thanks to Liz's less than stellar parenting skills, he was a lot more careful with his own children. No harm was ever coming to them, not on his watch.

“Wow!” Tori gasped as her eyes took in the scene. “They have more books than we do!”

Jess smirked at that. “Maybe,” he considered, picturing the sizeable collection of volumes in the Mariano home, owned collectively by himself, Rory, and the kids. “Pretty close run thing.”

Tori was bouncing like Tigger on speed, just itching to go investigate the shelves of books. Though she was not yet five years old, Tori loved to read, and neither Jess nor Rory had been surprised. They encouraged both their kids to have a love of the written word and had not failed to engage their minds from the very beginning.

“Think they have any Dr Seuss?” asked Tori, craning her neck to look around.

“That’d be a no,” said Jess, shaking his head. “But I’m sure we can find something that’d interest a little monster like you!” he joked, tickling her ribs.

Tori giggled madly as Jess carried her to the counter and sat her down on there. She eyed the bell and then looked at Daddy for approval.

“Go ahead.”

Tori wasted no time ringing the heck out of that bell. Jess knew whether it was Matt or Chris hiding in the back room, the noise would in fact drive them crazy, especially since they were probably hiding because they were hungover. The few times Jess had been here, it was clear that the only things the guys were truly serious about were books, women, and drinking each other under the table.

“Geez! What is your fu- er, fundamental problem?” asked Matt carefully when he realised who was there and what he had almost said in front of a child. “Jess. And daughter?” he guessed.

“This would be her,” he smirked terribly. “Heavy night, Matt?”

“The heaviest,” he nodded once, and very carefully at that.

“Well, Matt, this is Tori,” he introduced.

The little girl held out her hand like she had seen her father do when he met new people. “Victoria Lorelai Mariano,” she said seriously. “I get called Tori.”

“Matthew Linus Wright,” he replied, shaking the tiny hand as best he could. “I get called Matt.”

“It’s a pleasure.” Tori smiled widely, then turned to Daddy with an expectant look.

The wink Jess gave her made her happy, because she knew that meant she did a good job.

Matt felt momentarily stunned, but soon got his brain back in gear. “Did I know you were coming today?”

“Maybe. I actually talked to Chris about it, but I kind of thought he would’ve told you, since he was the one insisting I come here, not the other way around.”

The whole time he was talking, Jess was expertly picking up Tori’s hands as they wandered over the counter, itching to ring the bell some more, pick up pamphlets, and test out candy from the dish she had spotted.

“Daddy!” she whined, pouting. “Not being fun!”

“I did not promise fun on this trip,” he reminded her, tapping her nose.

“Then why’d he say you had a fun-and-mental problem?” she asked seriously, hiking her thumb back at Matt.

It would’ve been impossible to say who was trying hardest not to laugh at that, Jess or Matt. Tori didn’t get why what she said was funny, not at all.

“Fundamental, baby girl,” said Jess when he finally felt able to speak without the laughter escaping. “It means the most important thing.”

“Like me?” she asked with wide eyes and a big smile.

“Yeah, you’re pretty fundamental in my life,” Jess told her easily, kissing her hair.

For a moment he sort of forgot where he was and that he was being this cute in front of an audience. Not that Jess cared much about that, but it caught him off-guard sometimes, how much he could lose himself when it came to either of the kids. It was the same with Rory. The world just went away sometimes, and there was only him and those he loved most. It was pretty cool actually.

“Er, so is Chris around?” he asked Matt who was grinning all over his still green-looking face.

“Upstairs,” he gestured to the staircase.

Jess nodded then looked back at Tori who was now crawling along the counter towards the nearest pile of books. The kid was obsessed, and Jess couldn’t exactly blame her.

“Seriously?” he said, dragging her back to where he put her before. “You're that desperate to get away?”

“Books, Daddy!” she said, as if that were explanation enough, and honestly, it ought to be. “Pretty books!”

She sighed and stared off into the middle distance at stands and shelves full of the precious tomes. There was nothing here suitable for her age group, Jess was sure. Not that she read books for her own age. She was well into the five to nine range already, and no doubt when she started school she would be miles ahead of her classmates. Still, if she really wanted to be down here where the books lived, it might be easier than having her bouncing around upstairs when he had to talk business with Chris.

“Er, Tor? I gotta go upstairs a little while, so you’re gonna hang with Uncle Matt, okay?” he said, shooting an apologetic look at his friend.

“I don’t know anything about kids,” he whispered.

“That’s okay,” said Tori, turning to look at him. “I’ll teach you.”

Jess covered his mouth with his hand at the priceless look on Matt’s face. He helped Tori down off the counter and the second her feet hit tile she started running towards the books. Jess looked at Matt who realised after a moment he was supposed to give chase.

Jess couldn’t imagine any harm coming to Tori on his friend’s watch. Honestly, at only four she could already mostly take care of herself and wasn’t likely to wander too far from her precious reading material anyway. They would be fine, especially since Jess only intended to be gone a few minutes.

* * *

“Flying monkeys are not scary. Roller monkeys are!” said Tori emphatically.

Her voice carried so much, Jess heard her long before he could see her. Moving past the counter and around the next shelving unit, he found his daughter sat with her back against the wall and a large picture-based book in her lap. Matt was sat leaning on the shelving unit next to her, and there seemed to be some Oz-based debate going on.

“Seriously? You can run from roller monkeys. The flying kind can swoop down and take you away!”

“I don’t run so fast,” said Tori sadly. “But I know how to duck and cover, and I’m smarter than any kind of monkey,” she said thoughtfully. “Daddy!” she yelled when she spotted him then, scrambling to get up and hurry to him, though he noticed the book was still in her hands as she came over, resulting in the large hardback smacking solidly against his shins.

“Thanks, Tor,” he winced. “What’ve you got here anyway?” he asked, lifting the book from her hands.

“It’s too green,” she said definitely.

“Too green?” asked Chris leaning over Jess’s shoulder to see.

The book was actually for children, possibly the only one in the place that was, Jess assumed. Certainly, the cover was very green, but since it was primarily about animals from the jungle he supposed that made sense. It might explain the talk about monkeys when he and Chris walked in, but knowing Tori, the reasoning wasn’t that simple.

“Greener than the Wicked witch!” she said definitely.

“And we have the Oz connection,” said Jess to himself. “It's pretty green” he agreed out-loud.

“Yeah, but not too green,” Chris argued.

“It’s too green, man. I tried to tell you that,” said Matt, getting to his feet. “If you won’t listen to me, listen to your target audience.”

“You guys had a fight over the cover of a kids book?” asked Jess, looking between Chris and Matt.

“Fight’s a strong word,” the former shrugged.

“Heated debate maybe?” the latter suggested.

“Man, you guys need women in your life. Stat.”

Tori giggled, even though she wasn’t entirely sure why what Daddy said was so funny. It just sounded like it probably was.

“Women don’t get me, or I don’t get them,” considered Matt. “Honestly? I had a better conversation with your daughter than I’ve had with any woman I met in a bar these past few months.”

“I always thought your mentality didn’t extend beyond four years old,” said Chris with a smirk.

“No, but strangely, Tori’s does,” said Jess thoughtfully. “At least I thought so until she decided she liked Matt.”

Tori blushed like her mother would at the implication that she liked anybody. At less than five, she understood that boys and girls grew up to be men and women, that people got married and had kids when they really, really liked each other. Thankfully that was all she understood about it so far, and Jess would like to keep it that way, until she was at least thirty five. Rory had been known to agree with that.

Matt couldn’t help but go with the joke. He sunk to one knee, which still put him way higher than Tori’s head.

“What do you say, Miss Mariano?” he asked, taking her little hand in his own. “When you grow up, will you marry me?”

Tori giggled as she firmly shook her head. Jess hadn’t expected that at all.

“Ooh, that’s harsh, Tor,” he told her, reaching down to pick her up into his arms. “I think you’ve started breaking hearts already,” he teased as Matt feigned tears.

“I can’t marry him,” she whispered in Daddy’s ear. “He’s scared of flying monkeys,” she said too seriously.

Jess laughed loudly though he didn’t tell the guys what she had said. He and Tori had a lot of secrets that were only theirs and this would be just one more between Daddy and his little girl.

Chris offered them to stay for lunch then and Jess accepted. Still, he made a point of leaving just as soon as they were done eating. He really wanted to get back to the Hollow and share the news he received from Chris with Rory and Jack. It hadn’t occurred to Tori to ask what Daddy had discussed with his friends, and Jess could see no reason why it would. She wouldn’t understand the implication of it if he told her, but suddenly he couldn’t keep the news in any longer. He had vowed that Rory would be the first person he told, but Jess had a plan.

They were in the cab, headed for the train terminal, and Tori was already looking forlorn as she waved at the passing buildings. “Bye bye, Philly,” she said sadly.

Jess pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialled Rory’s number. Immediately, he handed the phone to Tori.

“Tell Mommy we’re headed home,” he told her and the second Rory picked up, Tori did just that.

“Mommy! We’re headed home,” she repeated word for word.

Jess leaned in close so he could hear Rory’s reply; “That’s good, Tori. Me and your brother are missing you guys already, but at least Jack is feeling better now. Did Daddy have a good meeting?”

“Tell her it went great,” Jess prompted in a whisper.

“It went great,” Tori repeated, and Jess continued to feed her the words to say. “Daddy says Uncle Chris had good news. A random house wants to buy Daddy’s book.”

Even though she didn’t get the words exactly right, Jess knew Rory understood exactly what Tori meant. He heard the squeal of joy from beside his daughter. The poor kid was almost deafened by her mother’s reaction, but that was to be forgiven. This was pretty big news, such a big publisher deciding to take on 'The Subsect' and sell it countrywide. 

At Rory’s insistence, Jess took the phone from Tori then and spoke himself.

“Jess, Randomhouse want 'The Subsect'?” she double-checked there had been no mistake.

“So, I’m told,” he confirmed. “Actually, they told Chris that if it sells as well as they expect, they’re going to want a sequel out of me. Lucky I already started planning that, huh?”

“Oh, Jess. I am so proud of you!” his wife told him joyously.

It was weird when he realised he had no way to answer her right now. Rory often took his breath away, overwhelmed Jess in ways nobody else ever could, with the possible exception of the children they had made together. Still, in this moment, his voice completely eluded him as she told him how very proud she was of her husband. Jess never thought he could feel so proud of himself, never thought he would have a reason to. Right here in this moment, knowing how good his life was and that it was set to only get better, he could do nothing but smile. Strangely, today's good news had allowed him a trip to the city, but he was only happy to know that he and Tori were now headed towards home already, with no plans to leave again for a good long while.


	23. Operation Rossini - 9th/10th August 2015

“You’re sure this is a good idea?”

“Billy, you’re such a goody-goody!”

“Can it, Tori!”

“Jack! Billy told me to can it!”

“Will you two cut it out?” he urged both his sister and uncle, not that Jack really thought of Billy that way most of the time because it was just too weird.

After all, Billy and Toria were very close in age and Jack was two years older than Billy himself. Theirs was an odd family tree, and it didn’t just apply to the two of them but the entire group of nine kids that had gathered here today.

“How about you all cut it out unless you want us to get caught?” said Davey, taking charge as best he could.

At almost thirteen, he had every right to be in command, though as a general rule he didn’t try. Davey was way more of a follower than a leader. Generally it was Jack who commanded attention, despite the fact he was only ten. Martha always backed up her BFF over her brother, so that was just how it worked out. Today had been Jack’s idea too, but everybody else had agreed without a moment’s pause. So here they were, all gathered together in Miss Patty’s studio, not daring to put on a light for fear of getting busted.

“Okay, cover story check,” said Martha, looking around at her friends. “Our folks think all three of us are at the Crap Shack.”

“That’s where Mom thinks we are too,” said Steve of himself and Kwan.

“Dad thinks we’re still home with Mom,” said Tori next, gesturing towards Jack to include him. “Mom thinks we went across to the diner to see Dad. Doula?” she prompted since she had yet to speak up.

“I just snuck out,” she shrugged. “It’ll probably be a while before they notice.”

Jack literally face-palmed. He knew his grandma Liz and her husband T.J. weren’t the sharpest tools in the box, but they were going to notice their daughter of not yet nine missing from the house before long. Time was limited.

“Okay, so we need to get this done, and fast,” said Davey, encouraging everybody to sit down already. “I saved what I could out of my allowance.”

“I got a little from helping with dishwashing at the diner,” said Jack, pulling a couple of dollars from his back pocket.

One by one, the kids presented a whole bunch of coins from their pockets and piled them onto the floor. Martha was the math whiz and took on the job of totalling up the amount without being asked. In moments, they had a figure.

“Nineteen dollars and eighty two cents,” she proclaimed. “That is a long way short.”

“Well, maybe we could get something else?” suggested Kwan. “Does it have to be the pin?”

“Yes!” Jack insisted. “Mrs R loved it so much. It’s special, just like the one she had years ago from her husband. She gave it back and he took it to war and never came home. She has been so good to all of us, we owe her this!”

Not one amongst the kids would argue with that. Though they all had relations enough between them of the blood kind, Mrs Rossini had been an extra great-grandma to each and every one of them. She baby-sat, she remembered every one of their birthdays without fail. She had very little money but everybody always got a card on every special occasion, and little gifts sometimes too. Now it was her birthday, the adults were overheard saying it was a big one too. Mrs R was going to be ninety years old, and that was a number that none of the kids could really comprehend as an age for a person, especially the littlest amongst them - Jaime and Tori were not yet eight themselves.

It was one day when Mrs R was in town with Jack and Tori that the story was told about the cameo. She saw it in the window of the antique shop and spoke softly of her dear departed husband, the gift he had made to her that had been lost when he was. They immediately decided Mrs R had to have that pin, but it was pricey. With all the kids pooling resources they hoped to have enough, but not-quite twenty bucks was barely enough for a deposit on something that cost so much.

“Her birthday is tomorrow. We’re all out of time,” said Davey sadly. “I guess we’ll just have to-”

“Ssssh!” said Martha sharply. “Somebody’s coming!”

The kids all jumped up and scattered at the prospect of being caught. Nobody knew in which direction to run first and so were all of a muddle still when the door slid open and in walked Luke.

“What the hell...?!” he boomed as the kids continued running around frantically. “You had all better be in the centre of this room when I get to three or so help me God there’s going to be trouble!” he said angrily, stepping into the studio as he began to count. “One, two...”

All the kids came running back from their various locations, ducking behind each other as if that might save them. Billy was shoved to the front, since his dad was likely to go easiest on him alone. Luke never needed to say three and didn’t bother as his foot crunched something on the floor and he stooped to see what it was. Frowning, he scooped up nickels and quarters, a couple of dollar bills. Crouched down on the floor still, he looked up to eye all the kids quizzically.

“What is all this?” he asked Billy more than anyone else.

“Sorry, Dad,” said his son solemnly. “We were... We just wanted to do something nice, for Mrs R.”

“For Mrs R?” he echoed.

“We wanted to get her a gift,” piped up Tori, pushing through her friends and cousins. “A pin, but we don’t have enough. Uncle Luke, we don’t have enough!” she told him, all wobbly lip and big blue eyes.

She was equal parts Rory and Jess in moments like this one. So sad and cute with the big eyes, it was impossible to refuse her anything, and yet Luke was ninety percent certain he was being played and that a smirk lurked beneath the sad expression on the little girl’s face.

“You all want to buy Mrs R a birthday gift of a pin?” he checked.

“At the antique store,” said Steve,

“A special pin with a face on it,” his brother added.

“A cameo like she used to have,” Davey supplied.

“But we can’t afford it,” said Jack sadly, toeing the ground with his sneaker. “We’re not even close.”

Luke looked down at the mess of coins and bills in his hand. Maybe twenty bucks. That was a long way short of being enough for a cameo pin, that was for damn sure, but the fact these kids would scrape together whatever they could for the sake of the old lady how had been great-grandmother to them all for as long as they could remember, it was beyond touching.

“Okay,” he said at last, getting up. “Since you were all trying to do such a nice thing, I guess we can overlook the lying and making all your parents frantic, including me!” he said sharply. “I’ll tell you what, you all get your butts where they’re supposed to be in the next five minutes, I will take your little collection here and see if I can’t come to some arrangement with Mrs Kim, okay?”

There was a chorus of thank yous and a general shift of sad to happy in the seconds that followed, and then all the kids ran off home, just as instructed. Luke watched them go, ruffling Billy’s hair as he rushed by him, just to let him know it was all okay. The kid worried too much sometimes. 

Luke looked again at the bills and change in his hand then, his free hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. A cameo pin. That was going to set him back a pretty penny, but he couldn’t say Mrs R didn’t deserve such a gift. She had been there for all of them when they needed her, not just the kids but the adults too. Shoving the children’s money into his pocket he headed out of the studio and off toward the antique store, as promised.

* * *

“I am overwhelmed!” said Mrs Rossini with the largest smile ever seen. “You are all too kind,” she said of her adopted family, and there were certainly enough of them present.

The birthday party was held on the ground out back of the inn. It was a beautiful summers day and that was a relief since nobody was sure where else all the people would’ve fit. The Marianos were present, as were the Danes clan, the Gilmore elders too, plus the Melville family, the Van Gerbigs, not to mention Liz, TJ, and Doula. Not a person was missing, and all of the kids were beyond excited to be able to present Mrs R with their gift at last.

“Go ahead,” said Rory, giving Jack a shove.

As soon as he headed towards Mrs R with Tori in tow, the other children hurried to join him. Mrs Rossini looked a little confused at first until she realised the pretty little box she was being handed by her adopted great-grandson was another gift and supposedly from the children.

“We all chipped in,” he explained, pushing his hair off his face in a familiar nervous habit. “We wanted you to have it because... because you’ve been so nice to all of us all this time.”

“You’re everybody’s great-grandma,” said Tori with a shrug. “We had to get you something good.”

“Love you, Mrs R,” said Jaime softly, the words meaning that much more from the one amongst them who so rarely spoke.

“Oh, my bambinos!” said the old lady gratefully. “I am not kind to receive kindness,” she assured them. “But I am grateful. You are all so special. So special,” she said, looking around all their smiling faces.

When the lid came off the box, she gasped, and those that had not known of the gift gasped too when they saw the exquisite brooch lifted from the box by Mrs R’s own shaking hands. She knew the children could not possibly have paid for this themselves. They would never have that kind of money. Her eyes drifted to the adult faces beyond and she smiled all the wider.

“Thank you, all of you,” she said sincerely, placing the cameo back in the box in her lap a moment and opening her arms to all the children who happily came running. “If I never have another birthday, I will not care,” she said, kissing each and every one of them on the cheek. “You have made these last few years of my life so very happy. I love every one of you, with all my heart.”


End file.
